Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney did not slap a Capitol cop. She hit him with her fist on his chest after he grabbed her arm. She complained, rightfully, that the Capitol cop failed recognize her face as he should have, which has been seen in the Capitol for more than 10 years, and that far too many people are focussed on her hairstyle, which she recently changed. Far from being ridiculous, this incident is merely unfortunate, and the latest in a series of incidents with the Capitol police dating back to around 1993, including one where her then 23-year old white assistant was mistaken for HER. To McKinney, the charges of sexism and racism may have well been aprops, although there is a bewildering majority of people who fail to understand her point of view.
Jesse Jackson charged “racial insensitivity” in the Toyota ad, not racism. Toyota agreed.
If you assume the stripper was telling the truth at the onset about the Duke lacrosse players, then racism is an appropriate charge for what was initially assumed to be a multiple rape. The facts uncovered so far exonerate the accused students from the worst of the charges. That said, much of what I’ve heard and seen regarding these students behavior before, during and after the incident (and the tactics of their lawyers) strikes me as awfully bigoted pandering and harassment due to class as well as race. Much the same of course, can be said for the strippers’ die-hard supporters accusations about the Duke alumni and students.
The onset of the Tawana Brawley case seemed to indicate a racist attack. The facts uncovered during the course of investigation did not: there were no white men, Tawana smeared feces on herself. Sharpton has never admitted his mistake in defending Brawley.
The seven Decatur, Illinois students were initially jointly expelled for two years with no other recourse for them to resume their education. This sentence was inconveniently in violation of state law that said students must attend school until age 18. Justifications in reaction to the video that recorded the violent act and prompted the school board’s decision ranged the gamut from, “It looked dangerous” and “It could have been serious” and “There might have been serious injuries.” But there WERE no serious injuries: the fight was broken up soon after. Yet the school board gave all seven students the same wrongful sentence. Jackson contacted the governor, persuaded the board to review each case individually, got the students to attend an alternative school, resorting to marches and demonstrations to do so.
Then-governor Bush refused to pass a special hate crime bill some polls say some 80% of Texans wanted. The bill was easily passed after he left office to assume the presidency. By thwarting the will of the people over a campaign issue during the presidental run – the vast majority of whom are rich white conservatives who do NOT like hate crime legislation – it’s easy to justify criticism against Bush. However, I agree that the word racism was inappropriate for his special blend of arrogance, appeasement and bigotry.
Dark Alliance: The CIA, the Contras, and the Crack Cocaine Explosion has had copious amounts of documentation, much of which has never been disproven. According to wikipedia’s entry on Gary Webb, “Webb’s research was later vindicated by the CIA Inspector-General in two reports dated 1997 and 1998. [12] [13] Four Washington Post reporters detailed to discredit Webb’s work were unable to identify any significant errors. [14]” That Congresswoman Maxine Waters should therefore continue to champion this book and its findings in unsurprising.
It’s been awhile since I read the book, but I remember feeling that his long-winded discussion about names that are common among poor whites served as a distraction. It was an interesting distraction, but it wasn’t really relevant to black name discrimination.
I thought it was going to tackle the issue of black-name discrimination, but by the end of the chapter, I sensed that his take home message was: “Black people have weird names, but so do white people. Thus, you can’t attribute weird names to the poverty of black people.” That’s not really debunking anything but the idea that black people have a monopoly on weird names.
I suppose that this is possible. On the other hand, it ignores the very real fact that the impetus to use African-American as the identification of people whose ancestors were imported from Africa was explicitly based on a desire to be treated as “Americans,” in exactly the same way as the “Irish-Americans,” Polish-Americans," etc.
That some blacks who favor various gradations of separatism may identify with the word that most commonly appears in the news media (print and electronic), hardly indicates that the use of the term by any large group of people is indicative of broadly supported separatist emotions when the term was deliberately chosen to make them appear more like everyone else.
Surely, if they wanted to be treated as Americans, they’d self-identify as and ask to be called “Americans”. Period. “Polish-American” and “Irish-American” aren’t really comparable, because they’re all white. “Chinese-American” and “Japanese-American” are more comparable, since they are of visually different hue and facial features (but not to the same (perceived) degree as black people). And it has to be admitted that a lot of Chinese-Americans like that term because it stresses their difference, their otherness. Michael Chang, the tennis player, is a good example. Born in the States of ethnic Chinese parents, he uses the term at the same time as he tells people (here in Asia) that he considers himslef more Chinese than American. I think a similar vibe is going down with the use of A-A in many instances.
roger thornhill, a quick reading of your post would seem to imply that people who are Constitutionally protected natural born citizens of the United States shouldn’t expect to be treated the same way as, for lack of a more elegant phrase, ordinary Merikans if they perceive and identify themselves with a hyphenated ethnic identity. That to call yourself anything other than American is to invite second-class citizenship and mistreatment. But since that’s astonishingly bullheaded jingoism talking (at best) and possibly self-fulfilling ethnic bigotry (at worst), that surely can’t be the case, roger. Tell me I am wrong.
I am an American. That’s my *nationality. * I am an African-American. That’s my ethnicity. The two are NOT the same. So WHAT if I want to stress my ethnic otherness, as long as I work, contribute to society, pay my taxes, vote, abide the laws, go to jury duty? How does how I celebrate my cultural heritage and lineage make me less entitled to basic rights as a citizen of this country than people who consider themselves fully Americanized?
Well, off the bat, it would imagine black people whose family have lived in America for, say 250 years could - could - choose just to call themselves American (as I imagine many do), just as many who came from England, Scotland, Gernmany, the Netherlands, etc. etc. don’t typically call themselves Scottish-American, Dutch-American, etc. Heritage may - may - be seen a different thing, as something which doesn’t need to be encoded in a prefix: thus all the different ethnic groups could have their own pageants, celebrations, societies, clubs, etc., and choose to differentiate themsleves in those kinds of ways.
Do you know any Black people? If so, please talk to them because I promise you that you are on the wrong path with this thinking.
I know A LOT of Chinese-Americans. None of them have ever said anything even vaguely at all like what you are theorizing. All of them see “Chinese-American” as a neutral descriptor. None of them have any interest in differentiating themselves from general America, but all of them find it a usefuly term when discussing their cultural background (Chinese-American culture being a unique American culture that has been developing alongside Chinese and American culture for more than a hundred years). Furthermore I’ve never met any second generation immigrant that considers themselves more a product of their homeland than America.
There is no way for African-Americans not to be treated like Americans. It’s an absurd idea. Their culture is 100% American, probably more wholy American than our own, since there were no systematic attempts to erase the languages, religions and taditions of European immigrants. Black American is America. It’s not their fault Anglo-America managed to snag the term “American” first.
Look around you. There are a million different cultures in America that are American. A back-east WASP lives in a totally different world than a midwest suburbanite or a West Coast city dweller, and their families have probably lived that way for generations. What the hell are Mormons? They are certainly different, but they are as American as it gets. We look at Mexicans and see “foreigner”, but in reality there has been a continuous Mexican presence here since forever and a regional Mexican-American culture built around that. You can’t get a burrito in Mexico, but every taqueria here sells them like mad, and not just to gringos. Burritos are American Mexican food.
Every race, religion and nation has it’s own blank-American culture. Your life does not define America- Americans do. If Americans all decided to convert to Hinduism and wear saris, American culture would be Hindu and sari-wearing. If some Americans are Black, then some of America is Black.
The arguments about the implications of the term “African-American” seem to be glossing over the point that there’s a particular, fairly well-defined group of people that the term describes. I disagree with whoever it was above who didn’t believe there was a distinct “African-American culture” - there is, and it was from that culture that art forms like jazz and hiphop originated, a unique and recognizable dialect of English, and quite a number of other cultural features. “Black” is a reasonable substitute, but it’s simply not as accurate, as anyone who has dark skin and is of ultimately African descent is “black” - recent African immigrants and quite a substantial part of the population of the Caribbean, for instance. “African-American”, in contrast, refers to a particular group of Americans of African descent - folks whose ancestors were brought into this country on slave ships and who have in large part maintained a distinct culture since their arrival. “African-American” is the most precise term I know for that group (outside of silly suggestions that white South Africans who immigrate here ought to be called “African-Americans”.)
To me, I tend to measure a term by its utility. The distinction between “black” and “African-American” may not be terribly large, and obviously not everyone uses the terms carefully, but the latter term is a useful one in my opinion.
I await a more convincing argument that it’s “divisive” to call yourself “African-American” - one preferably not predicated on the obviously nonsensical idea that it somehow precludes one from being “American” as well.
He’s a Brit living in Hong Kong. He undoubtedly knows some black people, but I’m imagining it’s not a huge number given the circumstances, and most likely they are not African-American.
I’m not sure how much roger here recognizes that his views are distorted coming at this from the perspective of someone who’s rather far from the United States.
roger. Assume then that cultural heritage IS - is - seen as a different thing and that in the United States, at least, these differences often need to be coded in a prefix, since it helps correctly differentiate and label cultures. I mean, people who are of proud Scottish-descent must get tired of being lumped in with the Irish, eh? Who wants to be called Chinese if you’re Korean?
The commonalities between all of us lie in our nationality and national culture. The differences between us are religious and ethnic. If we can all abide by national ties that bring us closer as a nation, I don’t see what the problem is respecting and celebrating the vast diversity that make us all a differing yet united people.
even sven. Uh, there are some African-Americans far more miltant than myself who would chafe at the idea that our culture and ethnic identity is “100% American.” There are lots of borrowed cultural traits that comprise black American culture, from African and Latin-Caribbean roots as well as self-invented. I hestitate, personally, to put a percentage to it.
Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Benin, The Gambia, Mali, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Senegal, Togo, Cameroon, and the Congos had existed as nation states at the time that their people were herded into the holds of ships and hauled acrossd the Atlantic
and
there had not been a concerted effort to break all the social and familial bonds of the people so transported.
Since the people who transported slaves made the explicit effort to destroy all connection between the imported slaves and their homelands, using the continent of origin–the one link they all shared–makes more sense (in the context of finding a descriptor that has the look and feel of all the others who perceive themselves as a “nation of immigrants”) than using a term that will further separate them from their neighbors such as "slave-brought-Americans or something similar.
The "hyphenated-American construction is not used universally across the U.S. (which leads to my criticism of “African-American”), but where people use it to remind theselves of their own immigrant forebears, African-American is the most appropriate term for those whose ancestors were imported from Africa.
Alright, the last sentence was wrong, and you can’t apply that to all blacks. I still do not feel guilt though as i don’t feel US race relations are a big issue globally (ethnic and racial hatred are major problems as Rwanda proved, but in the US I don’t think they are major), but yeah that was wrong as not all blacks share that attitude.
As a white person who for the most part is not exposed to alot of ethnic diversity (my city is diverse, but not extremely so), which is an admission that may result in a string of insults, my impression is that as it stands now in 2006 many of the problems of blacks are due to black culture itself as people like Larry Elder or Bill Cosby claim rather than anything whites are doing. Whites are still racist, but I think it is a minor form of oppression at this point. I feel alot of the problems of black culture at this point are due to a self destructive attitude among blacks that is in part born out of a feeling that success in the white mans world is a form of selling out. As a result I do not feel responsible. I’m im wrong feel free to inform me, but I’d appreciate it if you or others would do it politely.
“A poor cultural trait?”
How about the rent is due tomorrow and with no health insurance how can we pay for mother’s cancer treatment, and we can’t afford to send Johnny to an SAT prep course and both my husband and me work two jobs, so we hardly ever have time to help with his home work, and we don’t understand it anyway because we had to drop out to support our families and Johnny is home alone a lot, or on the street, where everyone asks “Where you from?” so where do you think he’s going to end up? I taught in LAUSD for 15 years and I lived in South Central so I’ve seen it all happen.
Is that what you mean by a “poor cultural trait”?
Or is it that he can’t make a decent martini while discusses his portfolia at Pinot?
