We have to rely on media to convey events. This is why it so often seems as if an event or movement just occurred when in actualiy it never went away. I remember some 20-30 years ago when militia and neo-nazi groups were armed and considered dangerous by the govt and media. They were infilitrated by the FBI. We were spare with use of the word terrorist. I often wondered whether those groups simply disappeared. They've always been there, just not splashed on the front pages and in online videos. We see the world in the way we get our information about it. Most frequently newspapers, often from neighbors, friends, people at our favorite breakfast place. Unless we experience it first hand we are dependant on the perspective of others, so often it is 'new' simply be ause no additional information was forthcoming. It was easier when our worlds didn't extend beyond our fields or village.
1
With the vast majority of human beings it will always be me and mine over you and yours. And until the intelligence level of that majority rises up to the those few that have the knowledge and understanding and compassion to realize how self destructive that bigotry is it will never change. So if you're white, enjoy. If you're not, go throw a brick through a window. Life goes on.
It's hard to reason with anyone who thinks they're better than you.
5
While we aspire to those ringing words in that famous preamble, racism and xenophobia remain integral parts of human nature - we are all tainted with these original sins that must be struggled against by all, always. Across the political spectrum, in both conscious and unconscious ways white Americans protect their whiteness assiduously. Indeed America is an apartheid society. The most glaring proofs can be seen in its organization. Where you live predicts your race/ethnicity, income bracket, education, access to healthcare and the quality of your child's education and future quality of life. Sorry - This melting pot doesn't really work very well and it's for whites only anyhow.
1
I entirely agree, as I do with Ta Nahisi. But what we are dealing with is attitude racism, as opposed to law racism. There is a brutish small minority that is proud of being racist. This crowd will always be there to stir things up. They LIKE being racist. But, among the rest of us? My question is, does reproach and condemnation help? I have to say yes and no. Yes, it's good to be reminded of the fatal flaw, but being reminded is not going to make it go away.
I'm struck by the phrase "unbearable racism." For this old white woman, at least, it seems the only way to adequately describe the situation in the US.
2
White supremacy is what prevents school history books from accurately depicting the causes of the Civil War, Reconstruction and Jim Crow. It overlooks issues of health, employment, credit, housing, community standing and even statistical evidence like poverty rates, university admission, income, prison population, police killings, culture and family structure.
We can't address supremacy as a thing, It is a process -- a national policy -- that begins with putting a confederate flag in the hands of those children in the photo.
5
I agree with Ms. Rankine that white supremacy has been woven into the fabric of American society from the earliest times. We also have to ask who are the weavers, and are they all the same in their influence and power. The southern whites and their midwestern and western counterparts who raised the flaming crosses and wore the hoods were the threads, but others wove them into the fabric of our past and present. Some designed the laws to suppress racial groups for white benefit, but the benefits were and are not all equal.
White supremacist elites took increasingly genteel advantage of the race codes and racist economic structures to gain personal advantage above both ordinary black and white citizens. These elites could remove themselves so far that they no longer needed to use, advocate, or tolerate overt racial violence to maintain their hold. They found allies among conservative western Republicans even before Nixon’s Southern Strategy. Nixon enshrined these ideas into a new embroidery for the GOP.
The election of Barack Obama tore, a bit, at the fabric of white supremacy, and the white racist elites turned on him in fury. The election of Trump gave permission to their racist minions to turn to the streets and use violence, implicit and explicit, to make the point that this is still a white supremacist society. But let us not forget the weavers of the racist threads. They have much to answer for.
9
I don't think it is as much a matter of white supremacy as the powers that be protecting their interests. Happens in every country, not exclusive to racism in America. Did the Incas care about other tribes? Romans ruled, enslaved, killed so were they supporting white supremacy? The French revolution flipped the tables and became possibly worse than the ruling class in their quest for supremacy. Nations now are more inclusive, have greater awareness of the inequities than ever before. But every society is tribal at its core, to maintain and hold power.
1
I just want to say that I have been an admirer of Claudia Rankine for many years. Her poetry. I'm white. Still, she speaks for me.
2
Wonderful article. Thank you. I'm in the group who found Charlottesville an OMG moment, despite all we've seen (Trump, police killings of blacks) that clearly tells us racism is alive. Still even Essie Mae Washington-Williams in 'Dear Senator' writes that black communities tried to forget a lynching in her PA hometown before the 1930s. (Rankine acknowledges in her article that everyone gets in on the cover-ups.) There is always a tension, as Holocaust survivors note, between forgetting (which allows forgiveness) and remembering (which allows vigilance).
2
While I really appreciate what the article is saying, I'm uncomfortable with the translation of the Vallejo poem, particularly the image of a toilet, which definitely doesn't appear in the original. La resaca could be an undertow or a rip current or even a hangover, but whatever you choose to call it it reaches back out of the darkness and won't release its hold on us. Its waters gather/pool (se empozan) in our collective soul; they don't back up like in a clogged toilet. A better translation/reading would have made Rankine's point even more effectively.
3
I get it. The past was ugly. We need to remember the past. But why keep pouring salt in the wound? Everyone needs to pull together, keep moving forward and not over think this.
And if we hyperventilate over some racist nutjobs we basically give them what they want.
5
I think you missed a lot of the main points of the piece.
13
It is not the "past".
The 28 dead, and (+ -) 100 severely injured this year alone (9 months) proves the Right-wing American terrorists are active and enabled.
One wonders how much hyperventilating an American might do when he and or their family is the one subjected to terrorism.?!
4
The point is that this is not about "the past." This is the present. This is what millions are trying to tell you, if you truly listen.
3
For many of us, who understand and can't run away from the knowledge that our country was built on racism, as well as lofty and truly excellent ideals, the horror of the Trump election, of the Charlottesville march, of the official reaction, was that today, right now, in America, ingrained racial hatred is not only alive and well, but *acceptable* for a way too broad swath of people.
We know and understand the concept of Manifest Destiny, and how it excused both slavery and genocide. We know and understand the impact Jim Crow; we have read about the Oklahoma pogrom. We even know that the industrial regions could afford abolition because they found cheap immigrant labor to exploit.
We know that for two steps forward in freedom and democratic ideals, in exercise of democracy for the good of the people, for the very real advancement to civilization that American Democracy has sprouted, we had one step backwards in the reality of living the ideal.
It isn't about history or the lack thereof: it is about believing that white supremacy is the fringe, but marching with them, echoing their ideas, is acceptable because some really nice people were there.
A lot of people get that. It is why there has been such outrage.
7
Bear in mind she is known as a poet. She is moonlighting.
1
And as a poet Claudia Rankine has spoken out about racism in various venues. Many people believe poets are the true prophets of society. She is not "moonlighting," whatever that means.
10
"And white Americans have been in collusion with white supremacy for as long as they have refused to see their own investment in it.
How we apprehend climate change or how we protect our immigrant communities is not separate from our recognition of the hold white supremacy has on us."
I agree with the first statement above, but the obsession with a relative few across the country is not the primary problem facing us, instead it is the institutionalized racism that is so prevalent in our society. Examples are the extent of segregation in residences and schools, lack of participation in governing and other institutions and levels of achievement, regardless of predominant political party. Studies have shown that Democrats are much more similar to Republicans in inherent bias than in being unbiased.
I disagree with the author on the second statement. As an example China is the largest producer of greenhouse gases, and depends upon claiming developing nation status in order to continue doing so. China, India, Japan and others are still planning on around 1000 coal fired power plants, depending upon which report is referenced. Hardly 'white supremacy'. 'Protecting our immigrant communities' for Democrats means ignoring immigrant law and shielding illegal immigrants. I guess they view this as an equivalent of modern day slavery and they are the Underground Railroad, where everyone in the world who wants to live in the US should be able to do so. 'White Supremacy?'
2
Let me put this as clearly as possible. Charlottesville is irrelevant. The real power of racism rests elsewhere. Its the same distraction that as the claim it was poor white rural men that elected Trump. In fact, the vast majority of Trumps votes came from urban white people. A majority of white college graduates voted for him. A majority of white women voted for him. Upper middle class whites voted for him overwhelmingly. And those are the people with real power. They hire people. They elect people. They are on the boards of corporations. They run our major institutions. In short, they are the ruling elite. They are the overwhelming beneficiaries of white privilege but they are also the primary beneficiaries of all the other privileges in our country.
The lot of the typical African American in this society would be far more improved by redistributing all the other privilege rather than focusing solely on white privilege. But that is not true for the upper classes. They are more than willing to do away with white privilege if they get to keep all the rest that really matter. Charlottesville is neither the exception, nor the rule. It is a meaningless sideshow.
15
I wrote a response, yesterday, Thursday, September 14th, but it evidently did
not make the cut, so I will try again.
I have spent all Summer working in the fields.
My skin is now darker than Ms. Rankin's,
[I have African-American, Native American and European Ancestry.]
My Great-Great-Great Grandfather died trying to free the slaves
as did my Great-Great-Grandfather.
No one in my family ever owned a slave as far as I have been able
to ascertain.
No one in my family is an overt racist as far as I can tell.
I went to a segregated school for a term as a boy, the African American
Teachers were as good as any I ever had. The facilities were
second class but the concerns of the teachers more than made
up for it.
[ I do have one bias and that is against allowing un-documented
immigrants in when the Poor of America need jobs. ]
I have met people of all stripes who despise others because of
something they cannot help. But they are few and far between.
This whole uproar over racism and the calling the President a "Racists"
and anyone who says the Constitution allows people whose political views
you cannot stand march - a racist - is too much.
To anyone who wants to do better in America for their families:
Demand better schools,
that people testify against those who bring violence
into your neighbourhoods,
that un-documented immigration be halted so that those
who are poor do not have to fight for jobs/housing/schooling.
Stop blaming people who are not racists.
14
winchestereast,
Why do you insult people that disagree with you
and why does the New York Times allow you to do so ?
I did not vote for Trump, so why do you paint with such
a large and inaccurate brush ?
3
In the spirit of "blows that will not be forgotten," it is important to remember that those white supremacists in Charlottesville sometimes chanted "You will not replace us," others "Jews will not replace us." The history of white supremacy is in good measure a conflict over who counts as white and who is in essence the enemy. Skin color has played a key role in this history, but so have other features as Arab-Americans, for example, know.
3
It is the last week of Summer.
I have been out in the fields every day and
I am willing to bet that I have skin darker than
Ms. Rankine.
When is the New York Times going to stop lumping people by
the colour of their skin ?
No one in my family ever owned slaves.
My great-great-great grandfather died trying to free the slaves.
As long as we keep engaging in the Politics of Identity
we will tear ourselves up as a country while the 1 %
treat us as wage slaves.
If you want to protest
then protest against the ongoing and
increasing povertization in this country.
Blaming
"Whitey",
"Bronwnie"
"Blackie"
"Yellowie"
will resolve nothing.
Absolutely nothing
because 152 years after
the "War Between the States"
people are not going to be
"guilt tripped" over the
tincture of their skin
and certainly are not
going to give up their
seat on the Economic Train
to monetary success
or political power.
Remove all the Statues you want,
write all the essays blaming "Whites"
all you want -
but the poor will still remain poor,
their schools - failures,
their housing - miserable
and their prospects even dimmer...
And yet these essays drone on and on and on
as if words could be eaten
and words turned into bricks
to build decent homes.
10
If a 60 yr old black man had been grabbing pussies, he'd be in jail. If he'd been prowling dressing rooms full of teen aged girls undressed, he'd be in jail. Coke and weed are tolerated and enjoyed by whites of the upper classes with no risk of incarceration. And our boys don't get shot dead coming home from work with a faulty tail-light. Our president hasn't mentioned the disproportionate number of white mass killers or white right wing terrorist events in this country. Or white boys shooting their classmates, 20 first grade kids and teachers. No No. It's all about those dusky immigrants and some white people dumb enough to fall for 'coal is coming back.' But, heck, I'm getting a Yuge tax cut if the GOP prevail, so I can at least continue to fund some group who will fight the good fight. Right? Left?
17
"If a 60 yr old black man had been grabbing pussies, he'd be in jail."
Bill Cosby? He seems to have engaged in a lot more than grabbing He was defended by privilege, but it wasn't white privilege. If a 60 year old white man had been grabbing pussies, he'd be in jail too absent some privilege beyond being white. Bill Cosby wasn't protected by white privilege, but he certainly was well protected by class privilege.
22
No one elected Bill Cosby president. And he still denies, not brags, about his behavior.
3
I'd say if we were white supremacist the writer of this essay but not be a full professor at Yale. The United States does not treat African-Americans like Nazi Germany treated German Jews. The fact that black Americans are disproportionately poor, unemployed, or imprisoned is clear evidence that racial prejudice runs rampant in our laws and institutions, and many Americans' hearts and minds. So again, we are at least a couple shades removed from a white supremacist nation. That said, it must be terribly hard for black Americans not to lose their minds in in the face of this. I hope writing this polemic helped the author keep hers.
1
Oops. meant to write "... the writer of this essay would not be a full professor...".
BTW I wrote the first post days ago. Better late than never I often say, but what's up with that?
Just read the story on how Jefferson county Alabama and others have been resegregatinh schools. the white supremacists are clearly again winning. Again. They're clever devils.
1
Funny how segregation among Democratic states is rarely mentioned in the media.
https://www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu/research/k-12-education/integrat...
BROWN AT 62: SCHOOL SEGREGATION BY RACE, POVERTY AND STATE
Civil Rights Project / Proyecto Derechos Civiles, UCLA
May 16, 2016
Most segregated states
For many years, the Civil Rights Project has been publishing lists of the states where African American and Latino students have been most severely segregated. We have consistently found New York and Illinois to be at or very near the top of the list, often with Michigan and New Jersey close behind.
The states that have moved into the top of this list include Maryland, where there has been substantial residential resegregation in large parts of suburbia, and California…
Because of the dramatic changes in southern segregation produced by the enforcement of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, none of the 17 states that completely segregated schools by law (e.g., the type of mandatory segregation that was the focus of the Brown decision) have headed this list since l970—in spite of the fact that twelve of them have higher shares of black students than the most segregated states today.
We are witnessing racial ethnic cleansing under the guise of following the command of the law. Deportations of long standing residents, shutting the door to refugees, mass incarceration for non-violent offenders are largely affecting black and brown people. We have sat by and witnessed destruction and cruelty (now for profit) to countless people to no benefit except to white supremacy. We've set up a two tier society, one in which some are permanently rendered into the criminal class suffering consequences for the rest of their lives. Supposedly because of the law.
The law has now been given talismanic effect and blinded us to the need to always decidewhat's right, what's just, what's moral. And that's because the resulting racial ethnic cleansing promises to reinforce white supremacy. Everyone gets that regardless of whether they say it.
Where would you have been during Nazi Germany when you saw your Jewish neighbors rounded up. Where you stand today while standing by watching the deportations continue to take place will let you know.
The law has now been given talismanic effect and blinded us to the need to always decidewhat's right, what's just, what's moral. And that's because the resulting racial ethnic cleansing promises to reinforce white supremacy. Everyone gets that regardless of whether they say it.
Where would you have been during Nazi Germany when you saw your Jewish neighbors rounded up. Where you stand today while standing by watching the deportations continue to take place will let you know.
10
Thank you for precise perception & acute analysis, New York Times. In Charlottesville ,Playwright Dr. Larry Myers of St. John's University & Director of the Playwrights Sanctuary, interviewed innumerable folks for his new poetic prophetic play "Black & White" Playwrights Sanctuary --authorized by the late legendary Playwright Edward Albee, mentors new & younger dramatists works focusing n plays about human rights & identity. Myers now has wings in Fort Lauderdale, Washington Dc & San Francisco. A "we shall overcome" manifesto informs. Playwrights must learn to express and overcome suppression and oppression.
2
Are you sure all "white Americans" are aware they have investments in white supremacy? All? I think I remember one or two white people where I grew-up thinking they actually fought with Dr. King.
Well you know, in that sad, clueless, Klan way they have. And I guess this is one of those "investments' that turns out to be like whole life where it really isn't worth much when I go to cash it in?
Now I'm ready for this "moment" you speak of because I don't think just insinuating me and my family are evil racists and secretly sheet dressers is doing much but making you even madder.
5
Perhaps sir. But this may be moonlighting as the author is known primarily as a poet.
Haven't you ever read what she has to say about racism in America before this article? She is not "moonlighting." Of course she is a poet.
1
I was not surprised by Charlottesville, but then again I am aware of the very long history of white racism and love of fascism. In the 1920's-30's, there were both Hitler Youth camps(paid by the German-American Alliance) and camps designed to recruit Italian-American youth to go to Italy to fight with Mussolini. The camps were in states that voted Trump this election,(PA,Wisconsin) but also New York State,New Jersey and even Portland Oregon, and California.(Camp Sutter) Go back further and you have the Know-Nothing party, and the periodic slaughters of people of color in St. Louis and elsewhere. People need to be taught the long,long,ugly, history of America, and all of the ways white people have sought to maintain control. Only by understanding the system and the sickness, can any action take place to change America.
10
The Black Heralds (translation)
There are in life such hard blows . . . I don't know!
Blows seemingly from God's wrath; as if before them
the undertow of all our sufferings
is embedded in our souls . . . I don't know!
There are few; but are . . . opening dark furrows
in the fiercest of faces and the strongest of loins,
They are perhaps the colts of barbaric Attilas
or the dark heralds Death sends us.
They are the deep falls of the Christ of the soul,
of some adorable one that Destiny Blasphemes.
Those bloody blows are the crepitation
of some bread getting burned on us by the oven's door
And the man . . . poor . . . poor!
He turns his eyes around, like
when patting calls us upon our shoulder;
he turns his crazed maddened eyes,
and all of life's experiences become stagnant, like a puddle of guilt, in a daze.
There are such hard blows in life. I don't know
Cesar Vallejo
3
The South has tainted the entire nation, and we have let them.
The KKK was not a national movement at first. It was born and died in the South. Then the nephew of the founder, Nathan Bedford Forrest, started it again in the early 20th century and it became a nationwide movement. The KKK died again, but remnants started other movements, culminating in the falsely termed "alt-right," but along the way of this dreadful fake myth/history color has become something it is not: a barrier between members of the human race, which is the only race we all belong to.
1
California has needed no help from the South in embracing and exhibiting racism, considering the treatment of Native Americans, the Spanish / Mexican settlers, treatment of Chinese and later the Japanese. It has one of the highest poverty rates in the nation when cost of living is factored in, one of the highest rates of school segregation, and ome to the most hate groups in the country.
After living on other continents, mingling with locals all over, (and I’m not from this country either — you’re all strangers, weird and contemptible), I’ve noticed this: xenophobia is common, not only in our species. It’s an instinct that likely evolved, endured because it conferred survival advantages. What do you get when you're friendly with strangers? Disease. Eaten. Mugged. Obnoxious ideas. Also, strangers make good scapegoats. (No space here to expound on advantages.)
White supremacy is a version of xenophobia shaped by culture, but at the core is an urge like others: to eat, drink, urinate, defecate, copulate, sleep, groom, get shelter, display, fight, eat, copulate more.
As culture has significantly transformed other urges, so we can do with the xenophobic urge. We may not make it disappear; maybe it still has its uses. But we can reshape, elevate it, like elevating the eating of raw meat to fine dining, or elevating the sex instinct to Romantic and Platonic love. Or confine it better: as with defecation. A basic start is to emphasize that the laziest, most inept, disadvantageous way of xenophobia is to go by skin coloring above all or only.
It's been expressed before: that we should make war of sorts against our own stupidities, base inclinations, ignorances, etc., deem them inferior strangers to the true selves we are and must strive to become. To do this, we need artists who can shape culture far more than many STEM and entertainment aficionados imagine.
2
Cesar Vallejo was a giant of world's literature, but much more; his poems must be read in Spanish to do justice to its meaning, and to describe human folly. In our case here in these United states, 'white' exceptionalism was invented to subjugate others to do 'whites' bidding by way of ruthless exploitation. When Vallejo shows his frustration and saying 'I don't know anymore', 'I am speechless' (from a master in language) when confronting injustice, when we become wolves of our fellow men, it calls for reflection...as opposed to just being reflexive of our sad state of affairs, inexcusable by harming the least among us. And yet, this injustice remains alive, while we bully our way to subjugate our fellow men by claiming superiority in the most stupid and maliciously persistent manner. Shame on us for allowing ourselves to sink so low, dehumanizing ourselves in a cruel domain of our making. Who would have thought, that the color of our skin would determine so much hate and division. 'White trash' is what makes certain groups odious to the extreme, the scum on Earth seeking relevance in all the wrong places. Prudence demands we stand firm and oppose this nonsense, apparently widespread and reluctant to disappear on its own.
2
The NY Times is obsessed, absolutely obsessed, over the actions of a couple hundred internet troll racists that showed up at Charlottesville. Was it an unnerving, despicable and a sobering reminder of white supremacy that still exists in the country? Of course. But get a grip NY Times. STOP buying into the endless and tiresome identity politics. It puts you on their level.
8
But it is not a question of "just a couple of hundred" racists. The President of the United States winks his support of racists. Racists exist throughout our society, from top to bottom. Haven't you noticed?
6
The author laments the whitewashing of history and then goes on to say that, "In 1924, the Johnson-Reed Act maintained a quota system based on nationality and barred Arabs and Asians from immigrating to the States." While it is true that the Johnson-Reed Act barred Asians, it would have had little effect on the relatively negligible amount of Arab immigration of the era. The law, based on the discredited pseudo-science of eugenics - later used by the Nazis as one of the justifications for Jewish genocide - was specifically aimed at Jewish and Italian immigrants, seeking to fix the rate of immigration using demographic statistics from 1890. This had dire consequences in the following decades for Jewish refugees fleeing the Third Reich. There would be no safe haven in America. (As chronicled in the book and film, "Voyage Of The Damned") It would appear that the author has a blind spot for the anti-semitic aspect of the law, perhaps believing that today's Jewish Americans aren't sufficiently oppressed to merit being part of the historical memory. It is perhaps a small observation. But, for me, it is a telling.
16
There's litttle doubt that the events and the aftermath of Charlottesville was more the rule than the exception.
Aside from the fact that this country exists in a permanent state of abject denial when it comes to race matters; lies the fact that Americans have notoriously short memories when it comes to their own history -- a history that for all practical purposes has been whitewashed to keep from revealing all the dark and hard-to-digest truths.
That is why the election of a Ku Klux Klan-endorsed presidential candidate is not so surprising. And why his failure to come out and unequivocally condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis isn't surprising, either.
And it's also the reason why it wasn't just Black people and Jews who were put on notice when hundreds of torch-bearing bigots went streaming through the streets in Charlottesville, Va. chanting vile slogans of hate last month.
It was America.
Aside from the fact that this country exists in a permanent state of abject denial when it comes to race matters; lies the fact that Americans have notoriously short memories when it comes to their own history -- a history that for all practical purposes has been whitewashed to keep from revealing all the dark and hard-to-digest truths.
That is why the election of a Ku Klux Klan-endorsed presidential candidate is not so surprising. And why his failure to come out and unequivocally condemn white nationalists and neo-Nazis isn't surprising, either.
And it's also the reason why it wasn't just Black people and Jews who were put on notice when hundreds of torch-bearing bigots went streaming through the streets in Charlottesville, Va. chanting vile slogans of hate last month.
It was America.
4
White privilege is a scissor: one blade of wealthy whites; the other of poor ones; the swivel is wealth, often money, but also employment, education, marriage, housing, food access, and many other facets of ‘better living’. Wealthy whites have long used blacks and other non-whites to demonstrate that poor whites could have it worse in the wealthy white world. Poor whites have used blacks and other non-whites as stools to make believe they are elevated.
Vice President Spiro T. Agnew attended the 1970 ceremony at Stone Mountain, Georgia, memorializing the largest bas-relief in the world, to commemorate the Confederacy. (White supremacy was praised by the Nixon administration, and each Republican administration since.) The KKK started the carving in the early 1900s, but cash ran out; work stopped. Passage of 1960s Civil Rights legislation renewed the desire of white supremacists to make their mark on the earth. Stone Mountain is more permanent evidence of white supremacists than any Confederate statue; removing it - difficult and costly. It’s the igneous extrusion of white supremacy in the United States.
White supremacy is also like a large, subterranean mushroom that occasionally protrudes from its invisible location in civilization with a noxious and bulbous fruit that more often poisons those who ingest it; those who would exterminate it face a battle with an old, formidable fungus on civilization. Perhaps we should start by sandblasting Stone Mountain.
3
White racism is as American as "God, Mother and Apple Pie." The United States has always been a white supremacist country. A significant majority of White Americans who voted in the 2016 Presidential Election voted for Donald Trump.
Donald Trump became POTUS because a majority of White American voters supported and/or tolerated his white nationalism and white racism.
3
The most significant portion of white voters who supported Trump were in the 'Democratic firewall', people who had voted for Obama twice. They disregarded his other traits as while no one else was doing so Trump spoke to their economic plight. Hillary called them deplorables and ignored them as she solicited funds in the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.
If they are racists then evidently a lot of other Democrats are too.
4
Ed,
You don't think there is discrimination on the part of African-Americans,
Hispanic Americans, Asian Americans, Native Americans ?
Are you saying African-American Racism,
Hispanic Racism,
Asian Racism,
and
Native American Racism,
is just fine ?
If any of those groups outnumbered the rest of Americans,
you don't think that group would be "on top" ?
One of my Great - Great-Grandfathers would not allow anyone in the family
to marry any Dakotas as one of his brothers had been killed during
a Dakota raid. Was that "racist" ?
A Great-Great Uncle had his father hung while Lincoln was president,
no pennies or 5 dollar bills for him. Was that 'racist" ?
An Uncle was a POW in World War II -
captured by the Japanese and tortured by them.
He would never by anything Japanese after the War.
Was that 'racist".
The vast majority who voted for Trump did so because the
Political Elites wholly ignore them and they wanted anyone but
Hillary.
They may well turn on Trump and the Republicans if they are
treated as valued citizens.
2
Who is "on top" in a society does not depend on numbers. The native Americans at one time out numbered the Europeans, in North and in South America. Europeans had the power. The English had the power in India when Great Britain colonized that nation. I could list many other examples throughout history.
1
So good! Thank you Claudia Rankine.
9
I see it not as "erasing our history" but as "telling more of the story"
2
At the March on Washington, MLK said his dream was that his "four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." I do not believe we advance Dr. King's dream by judging all white people by the actions of some, or by presenting a history of American racism that includes no discussion at all of Dr. King and the civil rights revolution of the 1950's and 1960's.
6
One day an advanced alien race will arrive. The treatment of Native Americans will seem like an incredible upside scenario then, oh to be retained in a reservation as a specimen.
1
Thank you for writing this article.It is so powerful .
3
We're rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns by continuing to vilify all people of European descent simply because of their skin color. This supposed mass collusion is as daft as Trump's accusations toward Muslims. Nobody deserves to be stereotyped or scapegoated in no matter how good it feels to the perpetrator.
6
We're rapidly approaching the point of diminishing returns by continuing to vilify all people of NON-European descent simply because of their skin color."
There, fixed that for you.
4
Walt Whitman would look kindly on this poet.
I thought the same!
You know that racializing everything is only going to make it worse. This author seems to have no idea that today a poor white and a poor black have more in common objectively than a poor white has with a rich white.
Class is where we need to focus. The media and the elites have been turning every single thing into a narrative about how all whites are racists and that if there wasnt racism all blacks would be middle class. That narrative is a lie and most of America understands that. The twitteroti may believe in false narratives but most of America understands that the real divide today is class.
Whiteness isnt special or great anymore. Whiteness today has no power unless backed up by money.
Im a white transgender woman. I get spit at in the streets, have food thrown at me, and its legal to fire me for being transgender in a lot of this country. Im an oppressed minority, my whiteness doesnt make life great.
The world gets better through unity. Recently, Ive been reading about how we are segregating ourselves by race worse than at any point in the last 30 years. Now we are choosing segregation, and its because we are taught by the elites and the media that our color does make us different.
In todays America the only color that matters is green.
2
"In todays America the only color that matters is green."
And Whites have most of that green.
Some Whites like you are not so lucky. You happen to have an enlightened attitude, this article is only pointing out than many Whites like you are not so enlightened.
As far as oppression, if you are White and are not taking advantage of White privilege you are doing something wrong. I doubt that Caitlyn Jenner gets spit on on the streets yet LeBron James cannot avoid racist graffiti no matter how upscale the neighborhood he lives in. Big difference there.
1
Great Article #STAYWOKE
Excellent piece. This needs to be said, over and over. Thank you. A couple of comments on the Vallejo line. I read "Yo no sé" (actually, ¡Yo no sé! in the original) as an attempt to utter the unutterable, an expression driven by defeat as much as by the need to respond, much like the Beckettian 'I can't go on. I'll go on." As a speaker of Castilian Spanish, I can't say whether this is a Peruvian Spanish idiom, akin to the Castilian, 'Yo qué sé,' a fluid catch all expression meaning 'I don't know,' 'can't say,' 'who knows,' a verbal shrug of the shoulders. Virtually impossible to translate. If I had to, I'd try to find an approximate idiom such as 'I just don't know.' Yo no sé, indeed.
1
The underlining existence of white supremacy desires remains a problem in America. But it is not only an American problem. The recent article about Libya tells us that it exists in Africa. The anti-immigration stress in Europe has a white-European supremacy element as well. We certainly are a long way from unreachable perfection. We must keep on trying.
It does not make us better to have someone to pick on.
It does not make us better to have someone to pick on.
I am not alone in being disturbed by what went on in Charlottesville, but I see it through the lens of someone who knows he is related to some who share the views of the white supremacists who marched with tiki torches. We have, in this country, attempted, to paraphrase Sara Ahmed, to reshape the surface of our country's institutions with a rhetoric that says that all of the racism in American history is in the past.
George Wallace called for "segregation now, segregation forever." He was a candidate for the highest office in the land. Our current president does not speak in terms that are as overtly racist, since he seems to have learned to morph his rhetoric to match the reshaped surface of our country's style.
Consider the changes made in the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird. In the earlier version, Atticus was racist. That was edited out and he became a just man. We white people have edited the presentation of ourselves, especially in public. It may be impossible to be born in the U.S.A. without taking on some racism, even if we can not recognize it in ourselves. Papering that over, altering the surface of that racism, will do nothing to cure this pox on our body politic.
George Wallace called for "segregation now, segregation forever." He was a candidate for the highest office in the land. Our current president does not speak in terms that are as overtly racist, since he seems to have learned to morph his rhetoric to match the reshaped surface of our country's style.
Consider the changes made in the creation of To Kill a Mockingbird. In the earlier version, Atticus was racist. That was edited out and he became a just man. We white people have edited the presentation of ourselves, especially in public. It may be impossible to be born in the U.S.A. without taking on some racism, even if we can not recognize it in ourselves. Papering that over, altering the surface of that racism, will do nothing to cure this pox on our body politic.
1
Jim,
Where is Atticus Finch a racist ?
He held the view that descendants of freed slaves needed more
time to fit into society - that may be a bias he had, but he did not
believe that African Americans were inherently inferior.
You owe Atticus an apology.
Where is Atticus Finch a racist ?
He held the view that descendants of freed slaves needed more
time to fit into society - that may be a bias he had, but he did not
believe that African Americans were inherently inferior.
You owe Atticus an apology.
1
Well, Atticus is a fictional character. The idea that the victims of an international process of enslavement that made them into property should be treated as second class citizens a hundred years after emancipation is not acceptable. We are now a century and a half past emancipation. I am not worried about Atticus. I am worried that the new norm is what I witnessed as an eight year old where the after school program was run by the KKK.
1
Nowhere is this racism more evident than in the following excerpt from the 3rd stanza of the Star Spangled Banner, of which few Americans are aware. In it Francis Scott Key wishes doom upon mercenaries hired by the British and escaped slaves serving with them:
"No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave,"
If more Americans were familiar with this verse, they might not condemn Colin Kaepernick for not standing during the playing of the National Anthem.
If all Confederates are traitors because they fought against the Union then anyone who does so is a traitor; John Brown, Native Americans, members of Shay's Rebellion and many other rebellions against the US, including slaves fighting with the English in the War of 1812.
A more difficult position is to argue that some rebellions were justified.
1
Thank you, Ms (Dr?) Rankine. This was a forthright telling of some necessary truth.
Ms. Rankine asks, "Do we really need to go over the history?" The answer to that question is always, "Yes."
Sometimes that need arises because people don't know the history, the information itself. Sometimes that need arises because our understanding of the information has changed or is in the act of changing.
She notes Baldwin's quote, "History is not the past." Therefore any conversation about who we are includes History. And therefore we need to go over it.
1
NYT pieces reach so many people, in so many places, here and abroad. For my own part, your article is bound to affect me on some level of awareness as well as in ways of which I might be unaware. Why do I feel brushed back by much of the article? Of course you remind us of a lamentable history going back to early days, even before our independence, of slavery. The answer to that came in part when over 600,000 men died in the Civil War Rather than go on with your unrelievedly negative view of race relations, which you appear to believe is adequately defined as white supremacist. I endeavor to express my concern as briefly as possible.
I have no idea whether men are by nature basically good or sinful; I'm on the side of those who can skillfully assess reality and do their part within the scope of their daily realities to keep things well and not make things worse. For me, the thrust of your piece has the effect of weakening my hope that in many places and at many times Americans are not proud of and do not embrace white supremacist notions. Will there always be people who are stuck with such views? No doubt. Even there though it seems that it is hurting people who adopt hurtful ways. Ways of peace need to embrace them as well.
I have no idea whether men are by nature basically good or sinful; I'm on the side of those who can skillfully assess reality and do their part within the scope of their daily realities to keep things well and not make things worse. For me, the thrust of your piece has the effect of weakening my hope that in many places and at many times Americans are not proud of and do not embrace white supremacist notions. Will there always be people who are stuck with such views? No doubt. Even there though it seems that it is hurting people who adopt hurtful ways. Ways of peace need to embrace them as well.
1
Donald Trump led the Birther movement against the first African-American president. Mitch McConnell, for the first time in history, held up a Supreme Court nominee for no good reason, when the resident of the White House was the first African American president. Within the context of our history, beautifully described in this article, both these acts are unforgiveable, unacceptable, and, in many ways, treasonous. History will hold them, and us, accountable.
1
Gustav,
Lying is lying but it is not treason.
Senator McConnell held up a Supreme Court Nominee for a very good
reason, he did not want another liberal on the court, you may not like
his reason, but they were good enough for him and the Country which
returned enough Republican Senators and Representatives to Congress to
control it.
As for Obama being the first "African-American" President - do remember
that he had not a single relative who was a slave.
Lying is lying but it is not treason.
Senator McConnell held up a Supreme Court Nominee for a very good
reason, he did not want another liberal on the court, you may not like
his reason, but they were good enough for him and the Country which
returned enough Republican Senators and Representatives to Congress to
control it.
As for Obama being the first "African-American" President - do remember
that he had not a single relative who was a slave.
3
"do remember that (Obama) had not a single relative who was a slave."
Apparently that isn't true. His white mother had a slave ancestor. Obama was almost half white by the irrelevant test of genetics and got far more of the benefits from white privilege than most white people. His connection to the African-American community and culture was almost entirely through his wife and children.
Apparently that isn't true. His white mother had a slave ancestor. Obama was almost half white by the irrelevant test of genetics and got far more of the benefits from white privilege than most white people. His connection to the African-American community and culture was almost entirely through his wife and children.
"Dominance functions through invisibility." (Jackson Katz)
Uh oh, apparently Mr. Trump doesn't understand this most basic mechanism of social control.
Charles Kingsley once observed, "Happy is the people who have no history." I would only quibble a little bit with that claim. Mr. Kingsley is talking about history-as-knowledge, an enterprise more or less comporting with the preponderance of evidence available at the time that might have been observed and interpreted in a rigorous and coherent way - History.
But History as it generally manifests itself, is part of the larger manifestation of culture and the Law which exists as a kind of all-enveloping virtual reality-scape which most people understand to be reality, and natural, inevitable, and moral reality at that. This unseen water-we-swim-in explains, regulates, and (if necessary) justifies all that is, the invented shape of the world that was and must be, that gives continuity and meaning to All. (And in so doing helpfully ranks all people and things on a value scale - most human to not.)
It's not a wonder that as the shape and edges of this All (which you call Whiteness) have begun to blur and twitch, people have become agitated (or hopeful, as the case may be).
And all of us are right to be focused (at last) on our history. As Orwell said in 1984, “He who controls the present controls the past; he who controls the past controls the future.”
However even "Whiteness" hasn't been all that useful for many of us.
While the confiderate flag is most certainly “associated“ with racism it’s not the sole significants behind the flag and to say or insinuate that is the case is just untrue. It’s our history as Americans and like other acts made by society it’s essencial we remind ourselves of those mistakes instead of destroy them. We can rewrite history we can only fix the future.
It's no that the history is fading, it's that a growing part of the population, immigrants, have no part of it in their culture.
As long as there has been white privileged, as long as there has been white supremacists, there have been white citizens who stand up with the oppressed and maligned and point out the wrong.
We are always left out of the discussion. There are more and more of us every year of my life.
While I am not surprised that the alt right still exists, I am buoyed by the fact that this historical way of thinking is dying out. It is happening too slowly, but it is happening.
What should be done with the statues representing and celebrating such an ugly, real and imagined past? Two famous Black leaders from the past can serve as guides to correct action.
Speaking in 1883 on Decoration Day, Frederick Douglass, the former slave and tireless abolitionist, knew what he and all should remember about the Civil War. “Whatever else I may forget,” he declared, “I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” The Confederate statues of the South ask us to forget this difference.
And then there is this from another towering figure in the struggle for racial and social justice, W. E. B. Du Bois. In a 1931 issue of “The Crisis,” the journal of the N.A.A.C.P., Du Bois writes of standing before a Confederate monument in North Carolina with the inscription, “Died Fighting for Liberty!” He proposes in his mind this inscription for the statue: “Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.”
“Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.”
Require this inscription, prominently placed, be part of every Confederate statue or monument and it will be easier to say, “But history is history, blood, warts and all.”
Speaking in 1883 on Decoration Day, Frederick Douglass, the former slave and tireless abolitionist, knew what he and all should remember about the Civil War. “Whatever else I may forget,” he declared, “I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery.” The Confederate statues of the South ask us to forget this difference.
And then there is this from another towering figure in the struggle for racial and social justice, W. E. B. Du Bois. In a 1931 issue of “The Crisis,” the journal of the N.A.A.C.P., Du Bois writes of standing before a Confederate monument in North Carolina with the inscription, “Died Fighting for Liberty!” He proposes in his mind this inscription for the statue: “Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.”
“Sacred to the memory of those who fought to Perpetuate Human Slavery.”
Require this inscription, prominently placed, be part of every Confederate statue or monument and it will be easier to say, “But history is history, blood, warts and all.”
This is brilliant and beautiful and somehow uninspiring. What we need is a list of things people need to stop doing and accepting and another list of things people need to start doing. First on my list of things to do would be constant calls to Democrats in Congress to remind them that they have the power to impeach a Supreme Court Justice. among other government officials. And then we all need to contribute to a significant effort to register people of color to vote and help them get to the polls on election day. Impeachment requires a two-thirds majority. Let's be practical and ruthless. I'm all for poetry, but voter registration forms may be more timely.
20
Stuart,
Perhaps you failed to read the Constitution
but you cannot just impeach a Supreme Court Justice
or any Federal Judge because you don't like the way he
rules from the bench or because your favoured judge did
not get a Senate Hearing.
1
I would posit that yo no se is not the stock I don't know or any of the alternate translations posited but more of an "I don't understand or I cannot fathom." in translation it is easy to adhere to the literal and miss the underlying meaning.
8
A mistake that is often made when one thinks about race and racism is to see it as a series of specific events. We tend to do that with history and it's a mistake. No single event stands in isolation to complex factors that gave rise to it.
So we should understand that racism has many dimensions, structural, historical, cultural, psychological, sociological, economic, medical and many more.
The problem with our efforts to combat racism is that they too often focus on one or another of those dimensions, assuming that the others will simply fall in line.
So we ban job discrimination, but can't force neighborhood integration. We bar state imposed racial segregation of our schools, but can do nothing about segregation imposed by private choice. And while we don't really discuss the psychological aspects of racism, we are about to join that fray as the debate over confederate symbols in our public parks heats up.
While it may seem exhausting, and it is, the only way to stem the 400 year old tide of American racism is with a constant social force always pushing in the opposite direction on all fronts.
It's not that we let our guard down with Charlottesville, it's that we passed a few important laws and then let our guard down across the board. Racism is in America's culture, and like our DNA it is ingrained, but just like DNA it can be altered. But this work requires a persistence that our nation has yet to demonstrate.
So we should understand that racism has many dimensions, structural, historical, cultural, psychological, sociological, economic, medical and many more.
The problem with our efforts to combat racism is that they too often focus on one or another of those dimensions, assuming that the others will simply fall in line.
So we ban job discrimination, but can't force neighborhood integration. We bar state imposed racial segregation of our schools, but can do nothing about segregation imposed by private choice. And while we don't really discuss the psychological aspects of racism, we are about to join that fray as the debate over confederate symbols in our public parks heats up.
While it may seem exhausting, and it is, the only way to stem the 400 year old tide of American racism is with a constant social force always pushing in the opposite direction on all fronts.
It's not that we let our guard down with Charlottesville, it's that we passed a few important laws and then let our guard down across the board. Racism is in America's culture, and like our DNA it is ingrained, but just like DNA it can be altered. But this work requires a persistence that our nation has yet to demonstrate.
26
drspock,
It may be the case that we will never be a global society.
It may be in human nature that we need to identify with
groups/subgroups.
You can call that racism - though from what I have been taught
races don't actually exists - so colourism ?
Or political partyism, or economical statism, or regionalism,
or athleticism, or beautifulism...
Nonetheless, if you traveled the world as I have you find that people
discriminate, either because they have been raised to believe that
some other people are "less worthy" than them, or because they
belong to a group and are not allowed in any other group.
In China they are taught that they are absolutely superior to all
other countries and cultures and the China Inc. is doing their best
to make that a reality.
Perhaps if you stop throwing "Racist" and "White Privilege" and
all at people who have no choice over the tincture of their skin
they might listen to you and work harder at being less judgemental,
which is something you and Claudia Rankine need to work on.
It may be the case that we will never be a global society.
It may be in human nature that we need to identify with
groups/subgroups.
You can call that racism - though from what I have been taught
races don't actually exists - so colourism ?
Or political partyism, or economical statism, or regionalism,
or athleticism, or beautifulism...
Nonetheless, if you traveled the world as I have you find that people
discriminate, either because they have been raised to believe that
some other people are "less worthy" than them, or because they
belong to a group and are not allowed in any other group.
In China they are taught that they are absolutely superior to all
other countries and cultures and the China Inc. is doing their best
to make that a reality.
Perhaps if you stop throwing "Racist" and "White Privilege" and
all at people who have no choice over the tincture of their skin
they might listen to you and work harder at being less judgemental,
which is something you and Claudia Rankine need to work on.
2
This is so clear and specific an explanation/explication and thereby quasi-indictment that it belies the seeming ease which Ms. Rankine utilizes to inform her words and shape her content. It is so quick and surgical an example of how things are to quote the great James Baldwin,
"History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history."
Claudia Rankine is a shining example of her 50-something generation of young lions who are in the prime of their energies and experiences and not atypically among the leaders in articulating the process/history which reminds us how we got here. It is not a new story.
Just as people who have been held back, those who are down, suppressed, incarcerated for no cause other than malice have struggled and carry their struggles like badges, stripes on their backs, there are those whose only sacrifice has been to lose sleep over the onerous task of counting their piles of lucre prior to sequestering it in vaults secure against their losing ill-gotten gains. Of course we must admit it's likely there are some among the 1% who are not stained indelibly by back practices, but wash and starch their fine white blouses as they would do, they cannot avoid bowing to the awful weight of chain they have forged in their histories.
We must continue to fight for ourselves and for those who are on the line. I don't believe there will be many willing to vouch for what sins the supremacists have not repented.
"History is not the past. It is the present. We carry our history with us. We are our history."
Claudia Rankine is a shining example of her 50-something generation of young lions who are in the prime of their energies and experiences and not atypically among the leaders in articulating the process/history which reminds us how we got here. It is not a new story.
Just as people who have been held back, those who are down, suppressed, incarcerated for no cause other than malice have struggled and carry their struggles like badges, stripes on their backs, there are those whose only sacrifice has been to lose sleep over the onerous task of counting their piles of lucre prior to sequestering it in vaults secure against their losing ill-gotten gains. Of course we must admit it's likely there are some among the 1% who are not stained indelibly by back practices, but wash and starch their fine white blouses as they would do, they cannot avoid bowing to the awful weight of chain they have forged in their histories.
We must continue to fight for ourselves and for those who are on the line. I don't believe there will be many willing to vouch for what sins the supremacists have not repented.
4
Let's be clear. The problematic divide in America is class, not race. The white supremacists see white privilege as somehow elevating them, but it doesn't. They are just white trash shooting their mouths off. They now have a champion in Donald Trump who uses race as it has always been used by the ruling elite to claim common purpose with white trash while taking all the real benefits of white privilege for themselves.
Of course race has been a central part of the European-American experience since before the first slave arrived. And in fact, you can easily describe the revolutionary war as fought for the freedom expand west by killing and driving out the native population. We don't. Like every other country, we have our American mythology that sanitizes our history.
After all the British empire was built on Elizabethan England which was a pirate nation living on gold stolen from the Spaniards who stole it from American natives. In many cases people not only lost their possession of the gold, but their lives along with it. The bloodthirsty process of conquering America hardly started with enslaving Africans.
What is unique about American is the 100 year long reign of terror by the confederates that followed their defeat. They lost the battle. but won the war as white northerners stood by while loyal Americans in the south were raped, murdered and terrorized by confederate traitors. That is a different history. It is the one that really shapes our discussion of race.
48
Saying "the problematic divide in America is class, not race" is tempting, because then you can shift the moral responsibility of American racism to just the wealthy (a group that can include other races too). You can say that those in power are the real antagonists, perpetuating a system that subjugates poor and people of color alike. In this viewpoint, poor whites are marginalized too, powerless to rail against entrenched income inequality that drains funding from the services they need and returns the resources to business interests and the rich. This is true, but an incomplete picture. It neglects to mention a legacy of violence, stolen labor, and stolen economic opportunity. It neglects to mention how institutions have been designed to target and oppress blacks, and that the precision of these designs is an American specialty, a skill our government continues to perfect (some European countries even copied Jim Crow laws, impressed with the US model). It neglects to mention that the US is not interested in correcting the institutional imbalance called racism with a proportionately institutional fix (affirmative action, reparations, etc.), because it does not want to pay for the original sin of its white ancestors using white wealth; and while it cannot bring itself to correct the institution, its citizens refuse to acknowledge personal prejudice: implicit or explicit, but pervasive. Please take care not to conflate classism and racism.
2
Ross Williams,
You seem to forget that Reconstruction was brought about by
a "Political Deal" to resolve the 1876 Presidential Election.
The Democrats and the Republicans sold out the newly freed slaves.
The Confederates were not Traitors, their is nothing in the Constitution
that prevented secession and nothing that authorised Lincoln to wage
war on the South.
If indeed, the South was traitorous, but not out of the Union then
the ratifications of the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments are tenuous,
and Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation Void - as it goes against
the Constitution.
Nonetheless I recommended your comment as you are correct:
The true division is one of Economic Class.
1
"the ruling elite to claim common purpose with white trash while taking all the real benefits of white privilege for themselves"
This statement highlights the dangers of relying on broad strokes and to ignore a long history that allows whites, including white "progressives," to deflect awful truths by relying on a simple economic argument and gives many whites who want to feel better about themselves an easy and seemingly righteous way to dismiss complex, impossible truths. The so-called white trash share many of the benefits of whiteness with the elites.