Month: August 2012

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The Party Of Lincoln

The Republican Convention played like conventions past, perhaps enriched by an unusual number of outright lies, but otherwise, pretty much par for the course. Planks of the platform controversial among undecided voters were avoided, attacks were launched, and the rest was pablum for the base.

So why watch? It’s a habit. I’ve been watching since the early 1990s when my work involved studying the political right wing. Keeping an eye on the GOP was critical to that work because it was then becoming and has since very much become the instrument of power of a right wing movement bent on … Read more “The Party Of Lincoln”

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Can’t You People Take A Joke?

This past Saturday, Gawker ran an article featuring Olympic swimming champ Ryan Lochte’s sister Megan yukking it up on a comedy show. Presented as a “field correspondent,” Ms. Lochte describes a trip to China while tossing out some pretty nasty racist stereotypes and slurs, including liberal use of the word “chink.” I won’t get too far into the details as you can see the clip here.

[youtube_sc url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHI838Ds76w&w=420&h=315]

 

Responding to criticism of her performance, Ms. Lochte had the following to say –

This was not a real interview, and it in no way reflects my true feelings or persona … Read more “Can’t You People Take A Joke?”

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Not resolved

My last post describing the invisibility of Native Americans in media as a logical extension of our history of U.S. anti-Indian policy needed an exclamation point. I thought more needed to be said about how the idea of Native Americans as disappearing reinforces the notion that the relationship between the U.S. and Native nations is a settled matter, or at least a matter beyond the reach of justice.

Matters aren’t settled. In fact, to consider the matter resolved, if not justly, then at least irrevocably, is one of the ways in which racism against Native Americans (and Native Hawaiians) is … Read more “Not resolved”

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Not Vanquished

I started Race Files after screening 24 hours of political commentary programs. I screened them to test a hunch. That hunch was that if these programs were your only window on the U.S., you’d conclude that people of color are a barely present and politically insignificant part of America.

I’m sure you won’t be surprised to learn that my hunch proved correct. To political pundits, people of color are usually (in fact, in the case of white commentators, almost exclusively) mentioned to make points relevant to white people.

But, no matter how minimizing or misleading the rap was on African … Read more “Not Vanquished”

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Fear of a Brown Planet: Our Majority-Minority Future

Sometimes, you just gotta admit when you’re wrong.

In several posts on this site, I’ve referenced Census projections pointing toward a tipping of the racial scales in the U.S. around the year 2042. The claim is that around that time whites will make up only a minority of the U.S. population. A Race Files reader questioned the accuracy of this claim, pointing me to an AlterNet article disputing that projection.

That article put me on the trail of more information. At this point on my journey, I find myself scratching my head over how easily I got sucked into drinking … Read more “Fear of a Brown Planet: Our Majority-Minority Future”

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More on Racially Profiling Whites

A friend (who I’m lucky to know because he’s so much smarter than me) commented my my post “Why Don’t We Racially Profile Whites?” pointing out that there is a white racial profile.

The white racial profile is the other side of the story of the way people of color are profiled. So, for instance, where welfare is concerned, Blacks are undeserving entitlement junkies, but whites are deserving needy people facing temporary setbacks, and that’s just among those who are able to put “white” and “welfare” together at all. Some would say whites are profiled as over-burdened taxpayers subsidizing freeloaders.… Read more “More on Racially Profiling Whites”

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Why Don’t We Racially Profile Whites?

A while back I wrote a post called White Identity Politics. In it, I wrote:

Whiteness has a political meaning as much as does Black or Asian or any other racial category. In order to define non-Whites as inferior and deviant, Whites needed to be defined as superior and normal. By claiming the category “normal,” Whites imagined themselves outside the racial paradigm they had created. But, in fact, they were and are at the center of it.

I was trying to make the point that while Whites seem to think of themselves as raceless, they in fact are the … Read more “Why Don’t We Racially Profile Whites?”

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The Case for Gun Control

The July 20th theater massacre in Aurora, Colorado and last Sunday’s shooting at a Sikh Gurdwara in Oak Creek, Wisconsin has put the issue of gun control back in the news. The fact that the shooters in both cases used legally purchased guns strongly suggests it would be a good idea to change gun laws. But pro-gun activists argue that the problem is not guns but murderous people.

On the surface, it makes sense. Guns are only tools. If someone wants to kill someone, there are lots of other ways. If we could only mitigate the motivation to kill, we … Read more “The Case for Gun Control”

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Why History Matters

A while back I wrote a post referencing Japanese American internment during WWII. A number of people have responded by asking why this bit of history matters to us today. The implication was that Americans (and by that I assume they meant white people) aren’t so naive anymore. Such a thing could never happen again.

That mass internment may never happen in the U.S. again is not a prediction I cotton to, though I’ll allow that it’s unlikely. So why tell and retell the story of internment during WWII?

Because we are still afraid. The color of the demons under … Read more “Why History Matters”

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Racism for Sale

Baker Skateboards, owned by professional skateboarder Andrew Reynolds (also the owner of Brigada Eyewear), recently released this t-shirt featuring a caricature of professional skater Don “The Nuge” Nguyen. Seriously, this is no joke. They really did go there and do that – right down to caricaturing an Asian accent calling the guys “good orr boys” and naming the car the “General Li.”

Not at all shy about profiting from racism, the Baker Skateboards site responded to criticism of the t-shirt by TMZ by posting the following on their website under a picture of the shirt –

“Roll over to Retard … Read more “Racism for Sale”