'This is no accident, no coincidence, because the making of black and white was the making of the world we know now.'
The hard question for me is how and why white people allow themselves to be so obsessed with race to the point it can be used to manipulate them, control them, keep them unaware? Full disclosure. DNA says I am east and west European, northern areas, with a bit of Scot Wales and Irish thrown in. Jeez and I thought I was American. Maybe in a thousand years we'll have American DNA. Race is a recent trait in the long history of evolution. But humans make distinctions based on anything and the anythings control them.
It turns out white people are their own worst enemy. Harsh statement, I don't think so for as they gleefully cheer Trump's often racist remarks the rich grow in power and control. You doubt? Consider his only accomplishments, more money for the wealthy, himself included, less regulation for the corporations, and judges who side with both. See any 'great' healthcare or 'cheap medicine? Meanwhile many of the working class cheer and relish a vote to put another dagger in themselves.
Trump rallies are the most interesting aspect of white self immolation, Trump lies, plays himself up, plays up the economy, lies some more, makes stuff up, promises greatness, they cheer, he name calls, they cheer, he points fingers. Do they see? Do they hear? He goes golfing. They get hats. Is this simply hero worship, their latest savior? The show is about him, he cares nada for them given his past history, but they play along, clapping, cheering, and laughing. They could be automatons. What a great release, a tribal dance, a show for a man who is hardly an exemplar of American values.
'Thereās a perception that whiteness is working for white people. Itās not. Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated.'
Reading assignment and quotes are from: How White People Got Made
"The great thing about the divide-and-conquer of creating white-skin privilege is that you donāt have to give people thusly bought off anything more, and American power structures didnāt. In places with black slavery, the whites suffered terribly." (See too Isenberg's history and Lopez's)
"There is not one gene, trait, or characteristic that distinguishes all members of one race from all members of another. We can map any number of traits and none would match our idea of race. This is because modern humans haven't been around long enough to evolve into different subspecies and we've always moved, mated, and mixed our genes. Beneath the skin, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species." RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Background Readings | PBS
"In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death.'
Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." James A. Baldwin
Further study:
'White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America' by Nancy Isenberg
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
'Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' by Ian Haney LĆ³pez
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian F. Haney-Lopez
*****
"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac." James Baldwin
"And then we got down one day to the point- that was the second or third day - to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, āNow, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. Youāre just as poor as Negroes.ā And I said, āYou are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And youāre so poor you canāt send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march....Now thatās a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that heās superior because his skin is whiteāand canāt hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.ā Martin Luther King
I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump
"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalismāfunding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan by Kim Phillips-Fein
The hard question for me is how and why white people allow themselves to be so obsessed with race to the point it can be used to manipulate them, control them, keep them unaware? Full disclosure. DNA says I am east and west European, northern areas, with a bit of Scot Wales and Irish thrown in. Jeez and I thought I was American. Maybe in a thousand years we'll have American DNA. Race is a recent trait in the long history of evolution. But humans make distinctions based on anything and the anythings control them.
It turns out white people are their own worst enemy. Harsh statement, I don't think so for as they gleefully cheer Trump's often racist remarks the rich grow in power and control. You doubt? Consider his only accomplishments, more money for the wealthy, himself included, less regulation for the corporations, and judges who side with both. See any 'great' healthcare or 'cheap medicine? Meanwhile many of the working class cheer and relish a vote to put another dagger in themselves.
Trump rallies are the most interesting aspect of white self immolation, Trump lies, plays himself up, plays up the economy, lies some more, makes stuff up, promises greatness, they cheer, he name calls, they cheer, he points fingers. Do they see? Do they hear? He goes golfing. They get hats. Is this simply hero worship, their latest savior? The show is about him, he cares nada for them given his past history, but they play along, clapping, cheering, and laughing. They could be automatons. What a great release, a tribal dance, a show for a man who is hardly an exemplar of American values.
'Thereās a perception that whiteness is working for white people. Itās not. Whiteness is one of the biggest and most long-running scams ever perpetrated.'
Reading assignment and quotes are from: How White People Got Made
"The great thing about the divide-and-conquer of creating white-skin privilege is that you donāt have to give people thusly bought off anything more, and American power structures didnāt. In places with black slavery, the whites suffered terribly." (See too Isenberg's history and Lopez's)
"There is not one gene, trait, or characteristic that distinguishes all members of one race from all members of another. We can map any number of traits and none would match our idea of race. This is because modern humans haven't been around long enough to evolve into different subspecies and we've always moved, mated, and mixed our genes. Beneath the skin, we are one of the most genetically similar of all species." RACE - The Power of an Illusion . Background Readings | PBS
"In the era of Donald Trump, many lower- and middle-class white Americans are drawn to politicians who pledge to make their lives great again. But as Dying of Whiteness shows, the policies that result actually place white Americans at ever-greater risk of sickness and death.'
Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland by Jonathan M. Metzl
"I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." James A. Baldwin
Further study:
'White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America' by Nancy Isenberg
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America by Nancy Isenberg
'Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class' by Ian Haney LĆ³pez
Dog Whistle Politics: How Coded Racial Appeals Have Reinvented Racism and Wrecked the Middle Class by Ian F. Haney-Lopez
*****
"White children, in the main, and whether they are rich or poor, grow up with a grasp of reality so feeble that they can very accurately be described as deluded--about themselves and the world they live in. White people have managed to get through their entire lifetimes in this euphoric state, but black people have not been so lucky: a black man who sees the world the way John Wayne, for example, sees it would not be an eccentric patriot, but a raving maniac." James Baldwin
"And then we got down one day to the point- that was the second or third day - to talk about where they lived, and how much they were earning. And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, āNow, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. Youāre just as poor as Negroes.ā And I said, āYou are put in the position of supporting your oppressor, because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people. And all you are living on is the satisfaction of your skin being white, and the drum major instinct of thinking that you are somebody big because you are white. And youāre so poor you canāt send your children to school. You ought to be out here marching with every one of us every time we have a march....Now thatās a fact. That the poor white has been put into this position, where through blindness and prejudice, he is forced to support his oppressors. And the only thing he has going for him is the false feeling that heās superior because his skin is whiteāand canāt hardly eat and make his ends meet week in and week out.ā Martin Luther King
I Know Why Poor Whites Chant Trump, Trump, Trump
"Historian Phillips-Fein traces the hidden history of the Reagan revolution to a coterie of business executives, including General Electric official and Reagan mentor Lemuel Boulware, who saw labor unions, government regulation, high taxes and welfare spending as dire threats to their profits and power. From the 1930s onward, the author argues, they provided the money, organization and fervor for a decades-long war against New Deal liberalismāfunding campaigns, think tanks, magazines and lobbying groups, and indoctrinating employees in the virtues of unfettered capitalism." Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan by Kim Phillips-Fein
