Commentary
Tokenism, Progressives, and Just Not Getting It
Sephius1, Black Kos Editor
By now everyone has seen the cartoon in the NY Post depicting a chimp being shot and a caption that read "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill".
It's one of the most racist cartoons I have seen in my life.
But what has surprised me is the "token" negroes that have been on tv trying to rationalize this cartoon. Like Ron Christie on CNN yesterday debating David Gergen, and Roland Martin (tried to find a youtube clip). But what has astounded me is progressives trying to rationalize the cartoon.
(commentary con't.)
Diaries like this really get my blood boiling. The diarist tries to mix oil and water, in explaining the shooting of chimp in recent days, with the writing of the stimulus bill.
Failed.
First of all, what the hell does shooting a chimp have to do with writing a stimulus bill. Nothing. Not a damn thing. The diarist goes on to try and make Al Sharpton the boogey-man, thus making Eric Holder's word true. We are cowards. Al Sharpton is not the issue. Discuss the ramification of the cartoon, instead of being worried about how Dkos looks in calling the cartoon racist. And hell FOX News' Gibson blantantly called Eric Holder a monkey, so it's not isolated (Editor's NOTE: The Huffington Post has corrected this. It did not occur). And the cartoonist has history of denigrating not only african americans, but women, and those of the LGBT community. I want to talk about the 3 strands of emotions I picked up on seeing the cartoon. But first a little history.
Miller-McCune
"Persistent simian stereotypes tagged to blacks are not mere small and unimportant post-racial leftovers of the bad old days", argues a UCLA psychology professor, "I cannot imagine that 10 minutes passed from the time it first appeared online to the time my phone rang early this morning".
The cartoon — you see it here — was clearly referencing the recent odd-ball news item, that a woman from Stamford, Conn., had been mauled by someone else's pet chimpanzee and that the animal had to be "put down," as it were, to preserve public safety. But the political commentary seemed an odd juxtaposition to the visual.
[snip]
Though much of the reaction to the cartoon has been outrage at the implication that our 44th president is remotely simian, there have been other messages in the blogosphere as well. A few pleaded with us to see reason in this post-Obama era. They begged us to understand that the cartoonist clearly meant to impugn congress, Wall Street executives and academic economists and that there was no racial subtext to the piece.
The best science available suggests otherwise.
For the better part of the past seven years, my colleagues and I have conducted research on the psychological phenomenon of dehumanization. Specifically, we have examined cognitive associations between African Americans and non-human apes. And the association leads to bad things. When we began the research, we were skeptical of whether or not participants even knew that people of African descent were caricatured as ape-like — as less than human — throughout the better part of the past 400 years. And, in fact, many were not. However, even those who were unaware of this historical association demonstrated a cognitive association between blacks and apes. That is, when they thought of apes, they thought of blacks and vice versa — when they thought of blacks, they thought of apes.
But the fact of this cognitive association was not the most disturbing part of the research. Rather, it was the fact that the association between blacks and apes could lead to violence.
In one study, participants who were made to think about apes were more likely to support police violence against black (but not white) criminal suspects. The association actually caused them to endorse anti-black violence. Most disturbing of all, however, was a study of media coverage and the death penalty. Looking at a sample of death-eligible cases in Philadelphia from 1979 to 1999, the more that media coverage used ape-like metaphors to describe a murder trial (i.e. "urban jungle," "aping the suspects behavior," etc.) the more likely black suspects, but not white suspects, were to be put to death....
So when I see my own progressives, being so dismissive of this cartoon it hurts, since we are suppose to the ones cheering on justice. Now the 3 strands are this:
- Equating the "writer" of the stimulus with being an ape,
- Police brutality against african americans,
- and the idea of assassinating a politician/politico if you disagree with them
The cartoonist tries to say that the writer / ape represents Congress (specifically Nancy Pelosi), not Obama. Oh C'mon. The image of President Obama and the stimulus bill are so woven together, that my grandma ask me the other day (I'm the political wonk of my family) had "OBAMA'S" bill been passed yet, not "NANCY's". The America people have tied Obama to this stimulus bill. STRIKE 1.
Then there's the case of police brutality against the "ape". We need only look back a couple of weeks at the shooting of Oscar Grant, a gentlemen who was subdued but still shot in the back. STRIKE 2
And then there's the idea of assassinating politicians/politicos you disagree with. Hellooooo.......JFK, or MLK anybody. I thought were threw with this kind of hate-filled rhetoric. STRIKE 3
We are better than this progressives. Stop rationalizing racial innuendo that is all to often very intuitive. It like covering dog poop with ice cream with whip cream on top and cherry for good measure. It looks harmless from the outside, but when you dig into it....
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Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
The blackwoman lurked around here for quite a while. One day she saw a front page article about the lack of black women’s voices around here (at least this is how she remembers it). She joined, lurked some more and finally, finally wrote a diary about being an angry, middle-aged blackwoman. Funny how the more things change the more they stay the same.
I felt like Stella getting her groove back. For a moment. The moment has passed.
At a time set aside to honor Black History, some white folks done loss they damn mind.
Uppity didn’t work so now we start with the tried and true. Monkey. For folks who don’t believe in evolution they seem to have a real thing about black people as ape.
This week a cartoonist whose specialty is hate, hated on Obama. Then the hater didn’t have the balls to own up to his bullshit and decided it was safer to hate on Nancy . Feigned shock that anyone would have misread his intentions. Punk.
Lots of hopefully well meaning but totally clueless white folk on this site decided for the rest of us that the cartoon wasn’t racist. There were even a couple of black folk who chimed in agreement. I held my peace. I’ve been holding my peace for a long time around here, just so you know. Every time someone says this was racist and someone else decides it isn’t. The folks who created it, benefited from it and have morphed it into contemporary times might not be the best one to define it for people of color. Just sayin’
Onesuch declared that since he could rationalize another meaning it meant there was no racist meaning. I held my peace.
Once hater let the monkey out of the cage, the Attorney General of these United States was called a monkey openly by a so-called newscaster whose last name reflects the species his father came from. I held my piece. It’s a nine millimeter Glock . It’s my imaginary weapon for when I need to go all Emma Peale on somebody.
Pulled it out of the ol’ mind closet blew the dust off of it and talked to God about a pass if this gets any crazier and a sister just breaks through the constraints of sanity. God said no. No pass. No breaking through the constraints of sanity. No gun.
The one thing God said yes to was telling the community of Daily Kos that many blacks (I know a few) think that the DK is a rather hostile environment for black folk. The existence of Black Kos is for some, a reminder of this. I cannot disagree.
I have had a good experience here on Kos ’ site. Most likely because I tried to stay out of the food fights that pass for diaries.
I read them though. Not all of them, but enough to know that the need to remain silent has been replaced by the requirement of speaking some truth around here.
There are far too many white folks willing to try and tell black folk what racism looks like. As if it hadn’t been defined by the behavior of a good many white folks for a long ass time. We were kidnapped and forced into labor without dignity, without identity without pay. For hundreds of years. Anyone who responds with get over it is asking for it.
For the record, all the black folk that I know want peace with white folk. Long for trust between the races. Since I have white folk I know and trust, I believe in the possible.
But it will not be made possible unless the inheritors of the legacy of slavery stop asking who you gonna believe, me or your lying eyes. That your parents didn’t personally own slaves, weren’t even in this country until (fill in the blank) and you don’t think you have any privilege as a white person, does not cut it. Nobody asks you when your folks got here in order to treat you better than someone black gets treated. It may be your only privilege, but from where those who are mistreated as a matter of tradition, it is a privilege we will never have.
America is no where close to post-racial. Some would like to pretend that racism wears only one mask. For some around here unless it is wearing a hood, burning a cross or shouting the "N" word it ain’t racist. Who’s zooming who?
It is galling to read that one imagines racism. I’m starting to believe that some of the white folks on this site think that being progressive means being unbelievably tolerant. Tolerating. Even racism. This is the highest virtue I can put upon their headset.
Or maybe some are just truly clueless. Perhaps they think that there are not dog whistles, images and ideas that can be communicated to those whose generational impetus has been rage, anger, hate and race. I’m talking of generations that stretch back as far as the birth of this nation.
What? You think black folks are the only ones who speak in code? Learned to do so during slavery. We took it to an art form. I’m sure you’ve heard of Negro Spirituals. Can you say Deep River ? How about Swing Low Sweet Chariot?
Code is what a person of color in this country has learned to speak. We hear it too.
I would like to ask if anyone truly thinks the one thing most blacks don’t know, is how many masks racism puts on. We have worked in your homes, offices and restaurants. Studied you. Caught your act. We had to. To survive.
In a nutshell...stop it. Know you might mean well. It’s just time to stop. I’m through being silent and... You really don’t want me in your diary. No threat. A promise.
Now run and tell that.
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The Root === Why Eric Holder’s "race speech" was better than Barack Obama’s.
Eric Holder’s confrontational speech to members of the Justice Department on Wednesday spoke plainly and bluntly about the level of racial discourse in America. "Though this nation has proudly thought of itself as an ethnic melting pot," he said, "in things racial we have always been and continue to be, in too many ways, essentially a nation of cowards." However equivocal his windup, Holder’s line was a punch in the face to America. As top cop of the United States, it’s his job to play the disciplinarian—but the lengthy admonition, given in honor of Black History Month, by the first African American attorney general, was the verbal equivalent of shock and awe.
"On Saturdays and Sundays, America in the year 2009 does not, in some ways, differ significantly from the country that existed some 50 years ago," Holder said. "This is truly sad." He spoke, with a tinge of bitterness, of the "polite, restrained mixing that now passes as meaningful interaction but that accomplishes little." Sure, blacks and whites mingle at the workplace or in the marketplace, on the subway or in line at the deli, but voluntary segregation, he assured his listeners, is still rampant.......More
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With his lies, Roland Burris has sunk what could have been a respectable, if unimpressive, turn in the Senate.
The Root === Of Fools and Democrats
Burris, who now sits in the same U.S. Senate seat once occupied by giants such as Adlai Stevenson, Everett Dirksen and, of course, the man he replaced, Barack Obama, likes to credit the successes in his career to divine intervention. And at this stage, it’s hard to argue.
Having survived one of the nastiest political firestorms in recent memory—the Gov. Rod Blagojevich train wreck—Burris went on to become, improbably, the 47th person to serve Illinois in the U.S. Senate, and now with one little lie, he’s destroyed what little credibility he may have had left.
In a scandal focused on allegations of influence peddling—that Blagojevich tried to sell the Senate seat in exchange for campaign contributions—Burris forgot to tell investigators that the governor’s brother had, more than once, asked him for campaign contributions.
The problem for Burris is that he told a state impeachment panel that he had no such conversation with the governor or any of his surrogates. Now there is talk of perjury charges and removal. And even if that is an unlikely outcome, fending off those charges is not how a senator wants to spend his days. Setting aside the crass, racial politics Blagojevich used to get Burris into the Senate, the best argument for his appointment was that he did not share the taint of the man who appointed him. Burris was seen as politically opportunistic, but in the end, a harmless figure who would dutifully fill out Barack Obama’s term, vote as he was counseled, then return to the quiet of his private life.......More
Thanks to SusanG for this clip.
By now everyone has seen the infamous "chimp" editorial "cartoon". For those who want to defend the cartoonist, please look at some of his past work.
Gawker.com === Ten Cartoons from Sean Delonas
The outcry over New York Post cartoonist Sean Delonas' dead monkey cartoon today is growing louder. But he has such a rich history! We assembled ten of his all-time classics of hate.......More
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White man nominated for an Academy Award for wearing an Afro wig? Come on, Hollywood!
The Root === And the Blackface Oscar Goes To...
The week that Barack Obama was sworn in as the nation’s first black president, the talented Robert Downey Jr. received an Oscar nomination for his role in the late-summer flick Tropic Thunder. The honored performance involved a character in blackface and an Afro wig; the role, a brilliant showcase for the actor’s "Ebonics vocal training."
A century after D.W. Griffith's "classic" The Birth of A Nation, some white folks still think it's OK to parade around in blackface. Hell, many feel empowered in the march to the post-racial America. Whoa Nellie! It's not OK! It’s obnoxious, easy and pathetic. This is not what the Academy should be celebrating, especially in a year when there is worthy competition.......More
NY Times === Revealing New Layers of African Fashion
When people talk about layering they are usually referring to clothes. But the layers of meaning were piled on thick Friday at the Bryant Park tents, where the hastily formed African Fashion Collective staged a show that aimed to dispel some of the hoary clichés that cling to a continent as obscure as ever, in some ways, to the West.
Anybody tuned into fashion knows that sub-Saharan Africa is currently in vogue (and in Vogue). Last year the Paris runways were packed with references to a place that, unless you are Muammar el-Qadaffi, can hardly be thought of as a unified entity.......More
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The NYT brings us a story titled "Terrorism experts feared that North Africa would be the next Afghanistan: a haven, and a launching pad, for Al Qaeda. Why hasn’t it turned out that way?" We here at Black Kos have a follow up question "How often does an expert get to be wrong, and still be called an expert?"
NY Times === The Saharan Conundrum
American forces in Afghanistan bombed the Taliban and, in vain, hunted for Osama bin Laden, while in Washington counterterrorism experts worried about "the next Afghanistan," a safe haven where terrorists would train, test their weapons and organize attacks on the United States. These discussions produced a double-barreled national-security strategy that dominated President George W. Bush’s tenure. The first element of the strategy was to identify and eliminate terrorist networks that already existed. The second was to prevent new networks from flourishing by promoting open, democratic societies that, the thinking went, would be less susceptible to Al Qaeda’s message than closed ones. Hard and soft power would be brought to bear on all the potential Afghanistans, while Afghanistan itself would be kept from regressing.
The list of candidates for the next Afghanistan was long. Just about every Muslim-majority country, or even those with sizable Muslim minorities, was considered suspect. Intelligence analysts fixed their attention on remote islands and jungles in the Philippines and Indonesia and on the rugged mountains of Pakistan’s tribal areas. Africa emerged as one of the greatest areas of concern, and the Sahel, a scrubby band of ungoverned terrain straddling Saharan and sub-Saharan Africa, proved especially troublesome. An Islamist government in Sudan was host to bin Laden for five years during the 1990s. In Algeria, an Islamist insurgency ultimately commanded by the Salafist Group for Preaching and Combat, better known by its French acronym, G.S.P.C., was entering its second bloody decade. And in Mauritania only 3.5 million people occupied an area the size of Texas and New Mexico combined, making it — despite decades of oppressive military rule — one of the least-controlled parts of the world........More
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NY Times === Mandela Joins Rally for Party Leader.
Nelson Mandela, now a frail man at age 90, emerged from retirement on Sunday to make a surprise appearance at a campaign rally for Jacob Zuma, the current leader of the African National Congress.
Mr. Mandela did not say much at the event in Eastern Cape province. He merely thanked the crowd for braving a rainstorm, and, with family members at his side, said, "Long live the A.N.C.!"
But with elections coming on April 22, even those few words were an important endorsement for Mr. Zuma and the embattled party that led this nation into the post-apartheid era. Mr. Zuma called Mr. Mandela a "living ancestor" who had wanted to attend at least one A.N.C. rally "to show everyone that he is still with us.".......More
The Root === An excerpt from 'It’s All Love: Black Writers on Soul Mates, Family, & Friends.'
THE FIRST TIME I VISIT my father’s bungalow at the University of Nigeria, I perch on a vinyl settee in the parlor and drink milky tea while my father rambles on about the student riots, the military government’s Structural Adjustment Program, his college years with my mother, what he recalls her saying about the family farm in Washington State—never a pause for me or anyone else to speak.
Meanwhile my stepmother, another stranger, flits about the room, dipping forward with Black Market sugar and tins of Danish biscuits, slipping coasters under our cups the instant we lift to sip. From the darkened hallway come the slap of flip-flops and giggles.
"You have children?" I ask politely, as if this were a question for a daughter to be asking her father, casually, as if it were not the question I’ve traveled halfway around the globe to ask. My bag bulges with shiny American goods: books and toys, watches and Walkmans, scarves and perfume. No matter their age or gender, I’ve got it covered........More
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