“The only difference between people in the North and people in the South
is that down here, at least people are honest about being racist.”.. Nor does it dawn on her that the very fact that she moved away from an increasingly Black neighborhood to live in a White suburb might itself be a aspect of racism. She doesn’t need to realize that “better schools” exclusively means “whiter schools.”
.. White people do not think in terms of we. White people have the privilege to interact with the social and political structures of our society as individuals.
.. Whites are often not directly affected by racial oppression even in their own community, so what does not affect them locally has little chance of affecting them regionally or nationally. They have no need, nor often any real desire, to think in terms of a group. They are supported by the system, and so are mostly unaffected by it.
.. To my aunt, the suggestion that “people in The North are racist” is an attack on her as a racist. She is unable to differentiate her participation within a racist system (upwardly mobile, not racially profiled, able to move to White suburbs, etc.) from an accusation that she, individually, is a racist.
.. Benedict Cumberbatch playing Khan in Star Trek.
.. The Angry Black person invalidates any arguments about racism because they are “just being overly sensitive,” or “too emotional,” or– playing the race card. Or even worse, we’re told that we are being racist (Does any intelligent person actually believe a systematically oppressed demographic has the ability to oppress those in power?)
.. A white person smoking pot is a “hippie” and a Black person doing it is a “criminal.”
.. Black and Muslim killers are ‘terrorists’ and ‘thugs’. Why are white shooters called ‘mentally ill’?”
.. The reality of America is that White people are fundamentally good, and so when a white person commits a crime, it is a sign that they, as an individual, are bad. Their actions as a person are not indicative of any broader social construct.
.. White people are in a position of power in this country because of racism.
Fear, Loathing and Brexit
My rough calculations, which are in line with other estimates, suggest that Britain would end up about two percent poorer than it would otherwise be, essentially forever. That’s a big hit.
.. impacts of Brexit would be uneven: London and southeast England would be hit hard, but Brexit would probably mean a weakerpound, which might actually help some of the old manufacturing regions of the north.
.. For that is the most frustrating thing about the E.U.: Nobody ever seems to acknowledge or learn from mistakes.
.. The E.U.’s failures have produced a frightening rise in reactionary, racist nationalism — but Brexit would, all too probably, empower those forces even more, both in Britain and all across the Continent.
How the Rebel Flag Rose Again—and Is Helping Trump
A year after the Charleston shootings, bigotry has found some new allies in the South.
In the six months after the Charleston shooting, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented 364 Confederate flag rallies around the South. That doesn’t include a spurt of growth in the number of flags on private lawns and on bumper stickers.
.. many of those in the bizarre coalition of racists, anti-government radicals and states’ rights activists who’ve led the battle charge for restoration of the rebel flag believe the GOP presumptive nominee is dog-whistling encouragement to them.
.. “The reason I’ll vote for Trump is probably the reason I feel most of the country is going to vote for him: They’re sick of the political correctness. We’re so worried about the minority getting their feelings hurt, with the flag, with transgender bathrooms and all that. Sometimes, the minority has to understand that their feelings get hurt too, and majority rules most of the time.”
.. At the University of Mississippi, the newly reconstituted student NAACP chapter began pressing administrators to remove the state flag, which also incorporates Confederate iconography. When they organized a protest in front of the administration building, the Ku Klux Klan showed up.
“We wanted to draw a relationship between that flag and white supremacy, to demonstrate that you’re either on the side of white supremacy or on the side of justice,” says James Thomas, assistant professor of sociology and the chapter’s faculty adviser. “So when the KKK showed up, it was perfect. When they were yelling at our students ‘black lives don’t matter,’ and ‘Go back to Africa,’ it made it very easy for us to draw the lines and make that contrast.”
.. I think what has happened is that for groups on the radical right, the Confederate battle flag has become a symbol of resistance to the federal government, which is their key issue. If you think about the Civil War, it makes sense; it was a battle fought by the South against the federal government.”
Lessons about China and Race from a Detergent Ag
Ho-fung Hung, a professor of sociology at Johns Hopkins University, noted that the nineteenth-century Opium Wars dealt China a blow from which its collective consciousness has yet to fully recover. “The European forces who crushed the Chinese during the war were astoundingly powerful. Chinese intellectuals felt they had so much to learn from them, including [their] ‘developed’ sense of race relations,” he said.
.. On the one hand, racial discrimination is widespread, and ethnic minorities, especially Uighurs and Tibetans, are facing serious institutional discrimination. On the other hand, people don’t like to admit this, and do not even realize it.”