'Dear White Racists' is One of the Best Explanations of White Privilege You Will Likely Ever Read

I occasionally share some of the work I post here on We Are Respectable Negroes at sites such as the Daily Kos when I feel that the topic is appropriate and suitable for that audience.

As such, my last essay "Dear White Folks, Please Stop Being So 'Surprised' When White Cops Shoot Unarmed Black People" has gotten quite a bit of attention from the readers of the Daily Kos. 

During the last few years, several of my pieces here on WARN, Alternet, and Salon have gone viral. 

Some of them have been shared tens (if not hundreds) of thousands of times on Facebook and other social media sites.

However, none of my online work has ever received 750 comments (as of the time of this post). The reactions to "Dear White Folks, Please Stop Being So 'Surprised' When White Cops Shoot Unarmed Black People" over at the Daily Kos include the typical white liberal racist dogma...and of course, there are a few trolls conducting a clinic in aversive and cyber racism.

But, among those 750 comments are some real gems of insightful and sharp thinking about the nature of "colorblind" white racism and its relationship to white racial innocence in the post civil rights era. 

One of those comments--written in the form of an open letter--may be one of the smartest, direct, funny, and authentic discussions of white privilege that I have ever read. 

Featured Reader's Comment: Do You Think That Interracial Hostility and Animus Have Increased Since the Election of Barack Obama in 2008?

I would like to follow-up on our earlier conversation about Dinesh D'Souza's new "film" and the Right-wing propagandized public. 

I featured the below comment on that thread, but I would still like to bump it up here. 

SabrinaBee relayed the following experience:

As to the looney right, my, but they are becoming more frustrated and unable to control themselves. Just bursting with so much anger that, they have to act out in some way. I was in Barnes and Noble and two men, that fit the movie audience you described above, were talking to each other, in a reasonable voice. That is, until I happened upon the new arrivals table. Noticng me, one fine gentleman raised his voice, several octaves and proceeded to voice how bad Obama is for America. Of course, I looked up and, sure enough, he was looking in my direction. I suppose he was expecting to get a defensive reaction out of me when, in reality it was the raising of the voice that caused me to look up. 

If i wasn't afraid the man would have a massive coronary, based on the redness in his face, I might have laughed out loud. Rather, I simply moved to another section of the store. I was amused, though.

As prompted by SabrinaBee's encounter with real-life breathing in the flesh Tea Party GOPers, I have a few questions. Your answering them will help me further refine an essay that I will be sharing here on WARN later in the week. 

Stated with more brevity and precision: your answers will help me to determine if I am grasping at straws, seeing chimeras which are not there, and trying to grab the "shadow people" who are lingering in the corner of my eye.

With the election of Barack Obama in 2008 the White Right predicted an outbreak of black on white racial violence, negro rebellions, uppity behavior by rapscallion colored people, and the end of White American civilization.

Of course, none of these events came to pass. Black Americans have never sought revenge on White Americans for the crimes of the past/present.

We are too generous of spirit and have only wanted our freedom papers and full-citizenship as equal members in American society.

Alas, the Black Freedom Struggle remains a work in progress. 

There is also a potent irony at the heart of African-American political project: we have helped so many others to be free that we have neglected our own personal obligations to communal and political self-interest.

My questions.

1. Have you personally noticed or experienced a general increase in racial animus and hostility in the United States since the election of Barack Obama in 2008?

2. If you are a person of color, have you noticed or experienced an increase in the types of interpersonal racial provocations or microaggressions from white folks as detailed by SabrinaBee's story since the election of Obama in 2008?

3. If you are a white brother or sister, have you personally experienced more hostility or antagonism from people of color, blacks in particular, since the election of Obama? In addition, since President Obama's election in  2008 have you personally observed or seen an increase in racially hostile and bigoted speech, attitudes, or behavior on the part of your white friends, family members, acquaintances, or others in your social network towards people of color?

White Privilege, Republicans, and the 'Just World' Fallacy

I feature readers' comments when appropriate and necessary. My post on the poverty pimps George Will and Paul Ryan over at Alternet has drawn one comment so far--but it is a damn fine comment and observation if I do say so myself. Thus, I am moved to share it.

Steven wrote the following:

I have no idea how to communicate "perspective" to someone who lacks any at all. I try to explain it this way: most white people do not think to themselves, "wow, I'm really glad my grandfather and his brother weren't lynched and their store looted then burned to the ground. Could you imagine the hole I'd have to dig myself out of if my parents and I all had to start from nothing?" No conservative white people likely ever think this. But the start we have makes a huge difference, in most cases by not having had something happen to us or earlier generations of our families. 

When people experience difficulties in their lives, they can have a very difficult time seeing themselves as privileged. It's very difficult for most majority people to wrap their minds around how much worse their lives would be if they were a minority. 

Whether the distraction is "lazy 'inner city' people" or affirmative action or something else, the result remains the same: people who have far more in common with each other than with the uber-rich remain at each others' throats, thereby accomplishing nothing to get rid of the fundamental economic injustices inflicted on most of us.

I think that this is a very good summary of the dynamics of race and privilege in the post civil rights era.

Steven's comment is also a good description for in-group and out-group dynamics more generally.

There is a sophisticated set of concepts that have been developed to discuss white racism (and its relationship to conservatism) in the post civil rights era.

The Defenders of George Zimmerman Would Have Been Cheering on Emmett Till's Killers

[I have received some very kind emails in response to my series of pieces on the George Zimmerman trials and his killing of Trayvon Martin. I have been following this case since the beginning and will continue to offer my thoughts and observations on it through to the duration. 

Those essays here and on the Daily Kos have brought quite a few new readers to We Are Respectable Negroes. As I do during such moments, I inaugurate an informal fundraising drive. Some kind folks have thrown some money into the virtual begging bowl. I very appreciate that. I doubly appreciate it given that this is a holiday weekend and money is being spent on festivities, food, and frivolity.

I do not advertise or monetize my work here on WARN. I also choose not to run advertisements or sponsorship because I want to remain independent. Random monies thrown into the tip jar Paypal bucket are however always appreciated. My work here and elsewhere are labors of love. However, I never refuse encouragement.]

****

During the 1950s, two white sheriffs discover a black man's body hanging from a tree and shot through the heart. The first sheriff is befuddled. He is looking at the body and is very confused. The second sheriff asks him "what is wrong?" The first sheriff takes off his hat and starts scratching his head. He looks up at the body and turns to his friend, "I don't know how this niggrah hung himself from this tree and also managed to shoot himself through the heart?" The second sheriff starts to laugh. "Hell of a thing. That nigger must have been one hell of a gymnast or Harry Houdini type!"

I am unsure as to the origin of the above story. But, it does capture the essence of the George Zimmerman trial for his killing Trayvon Martin perfectly.

It has all of the combustible elements of race in America--guns, crime, violence, and the law. The Zimmerman trial is also an example of how attitudes about race and politics are intimates. Defenders of George Zimmerman automatically assume that Martin is a black male "thug" with no right to life. Defenders of Trayvon Martin see a person guilty of the crime of walking down the street while being black and male.

As others have pointed out, a thought experiment is helpful in exposing just how messed up this race business is in America.

If people were told a story about a teenager walking home carrying only a bag of candy and a bottle of iced tea, and a person who was a self-appointed defender of the neighborhood/failed wannabe superhero cop shot and killed them, the standing prior would be that the latter committed a crime. Public opinion would sympathize and favor the former. If the public was also told that the shooter did a national TV interview in which he showed no remorse and said it was "God's will" that he took a life, he would be even less popular as his guilt would be utterly transparent and all but admitted to.

However, when these events are viewed through the white racial frame, with the victim being African-American and the shooter being white, the narrative immediately changes.

How perverse. Justice is apparently not race neutral. Given that America was founded as a white republic by law, and that people of color for four centuries in this country have had no rights that whites are bound to respect, such an outcome should not be a surprise.

Race is also a story of contradictions.

The United States can elect a black man as President. This moment can coexist with an increase in white racial animus towards black people since Obama's election, a fictive belief that white folks are oppressed in the Age of Obama, and research which demonstrates how white people are generally not empathetic towards the pain and suffering of black people.

I like to share readers' comments when they are particularly sharp and insightful.

In the following comment here on WARN, CSM summed up the national spectacle around the murder of Travyon Martin by George Zimmerman perfectly:

If ever there was a test to determine if what motivates the tea bagging/right wing/GOP is racism, the Zimmerman case is it. They support Zimmerman, even though he clearly is someone who they would normally hate as a "Mexican." Yet he's been taken up as a cause celebre by the racists not so much for who he is, but for who he shot. Before any of the latest Zimmerman story came out about Martin ambushing him from non-existent bushes, when all we knew was Zimmerman saw Martin, followed and shot him, while he was minding his own business coming back from the store, they were already calling Martin a "thug" who deserved to be killed on the basis of nothing else but his race. If this were 1955 they would be cheering on Emmett Till's killers. If it was 1963 they'd be cheering on the killer of Medgar Evers. They would have said no need for a trial in those cases. And if it was 1869 they'd be cheering on the Klan for destroying Reconstruction.

I am in agreement with CSM. As I have said previously, Zimmerman's supporters and the Tea Party GOP racial reactionaries would probably not commit the personal act of murder at a spectacular lynching. However, they would cheer it on, buy souvenirs, and make sure that their kids and grand kids are in attendance to learn the lessons of Whiteness as an identity predicated on domination and authority over the Other.

Featured Reader Comment From Brooklyn1825: "What is It Exactly That Barack Obama Should/Must do for Black people? Is There Even a Consensus on What We Need as a Community?"

I've asked this repeatedly and never get an answer... what is it exactly that Barack Obama should/must do for Black people? Is there even a consensus on what we need as a community? We are in our current position because of racism to be sure but A LOT of what's wrong with us as a community is apathy. We need to rid ourselves of the notion that some messiah is going to come and show us the way. 

Who picked up the baton from Martin and Malcolm? What did they accomplish? If Black folks really want political influence we need to separate ourselves from both political parties and make them work and earn our vote. We should support candidates that support our agenda (if we can figure out what it is).

I give as good as I get. Thus, my featuring the above comment. I have been thinking about Brooklyn1825's comment, in one iteration or another, for some time. I am still struggling to find an answer.

President Obama will be speaking at Morehouse College on May 19, 2013. I doubt he will address any matters of race, the colorline, the particular struggles of black and brown folks in the Great Recession 2.0, or systems of white supremacy. Given Obama's past record, his speech will be rich on symbolism and weak on specific policy prescriptions that actually address the specific and unique needs of Obama's most loyal constituency.

What do you think? What answer would you offer up to Brooklyn1825's question?

Featured Reader Comment About the Boston Bombing, Chechens, and Racial Formation: "Whiteness" is a Measure of Community Norms and "Good Conduct"

I feature timely, insightful, and challenging readers comments from time to time here on WARN. I love the interaction and good sharing that takes place here. As such, "bumping up" an especially good and useful comment is of use to improving my thinking and learning, as well as sharing the range of smart thinking that the readers of WARN consistently bring to the table.

I am going to develop our conversation about race, Whiteness, media framing, and the Boston Marathon bombing a bit further this week. We have hit on something there which I think is always special when it occurs--oftentimes "academic" conversations and terminology can, and are, distant from events on the ground.

The discussion about the racial identity of Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev is a moment straight out of the literature on critical race theory, racial formation, and comparative race studies. As such, it demands immediate comment.

My first obligation here on WARN is to truth-telling. When we can engage in that enterprise, and also learn something new, matters are always positive.

Commentator Larry Yates observed in response to my piece intervening against the mainstream media's consternation at how the Boston Bombing suspects can be both "white" and Muslim (what was an excellent example of race making in practice) how:

An 1857 South Carolina court decision on whether two men were white, quoted in Race Relations in Virginia and Miscegenation in the South 1776-1860, illustrates racial formation at work at the individual level:

"The condition of the individual is not to be determined solely by distinct and visible mixture of negro blood, but by reputation, by his reception into society, and his having commonly exercised the privileges of a white man. 

But his admission to these privileges, regulated by the public opinion of the community in which he lives, will very much depend on his character and conduct; and it may be well and proper, that a man of worth, honesty, industry, and respectability, should have the rank of a white man, while a vagabond of the same degree of blood should be confined to the inferior caste. It will be a stimulus to the good conduct of these persons, and security for their fidelity as citizens."

This is a great conversation starter for the week given how Tamerlan Tsarnaev and Dzhokar Tsarnaev are members of a "quasi-white" group in the United States, one that was just granted "full whiteness" five or so decades ago. Given the efforts by the mainstream media and the Right to "revoke" this status because they are Muslim, the logic of the above court would appear to still hold today.

Whiteness has value in the United States. Race is made by the law, circulated and enforced via common sense, day-to-day interactions, and reproduced by social norms and standards.

For example, the "one-drop rule" is just a folkism that explains how "black blood" flows from mother to child, and the rule of "hypo-descent," i.e. from the "lowest" racial group in a given society, determines one's racial group membership. A person can be 1/16th "black." However, they were still deemed a second class system and uniquely subject to the status of being a slave in America for at least three centuries.

Stated differently, the one-drop rule was just a way for white slave owners to impregnate and rape their human property, and then to not have to worry about questions of said progeny's freedom. A sick system is it not?

This is also a wonderful arrangement if one wants to ensure the creation of a permanent class of slaves, one that is self-reproducing and growing over time: Efficiency does not necessarily equal righteousness.

Likewise, European immigrants understood that the wages of Whiteness were valuable and worth compromising their own individual morals and values in order to attain. The price of freedom, and thus fully joining "white" society for European immigrants, was investing in White Supremacy and the power (as well as privileges for the in-group) of the color line.

The vast majority of white folks were active signatories to this contract; a few fought, and some died, resisting it; most, as people around the world do in every society, just wanted to be passive agents, getting along for the sake of it, choosing the path of least resistance. Free riders are a universal constant of the human condition.

Why rock the boat?

I have three or four examples of racial formation and race making that I am going to share this week. Please help me out if you would. If you have other lessons about how race is manufactured which are surprising, counter-intuitive, little known, or just particularly insightful, please do share them in the comments section.

Teaching About Racism in a Post Racial Age: The Pleasures of Deconstructing Colorblind Racist Speech Online

We are having a great conversation here about race play and BDSM. I was a bit nervous about the topic because we do not usually discuss sex and relationships here on We Are Respectable Negroes. As often occurs, I am pleasantly surprised by the range of readers here on WARN and their insightful comments. I am learning so much from all of the good sharing that is going on in that conversation. Do chime in if so inclined.

The school year is about to begin. The summer has disappeared and I have three weeks left to work like a madman to get some long overdue work submitted. I did have some good successes and will count them as positives.

Like many of you, I am updating syllabi and rethinking a few of my classes. One of the courses I teach each year is a required section of "Race and Diversity" in the United States. Many of my colleagues do not like teaching the course because the students are not always engaged, the evaluations tend to be low, and the issues discussed can lead to intense and stressful moments for "snowflakes" who are not prepared to think about power and inequality. For that cohort, they are individuals raised by helicopter parents, and believe that institutional and society power has little impact on their ability to succeed in our society. Unfortunately, there are also many adults who have also not grown out of believing in such foolishness.

For those reasons, I enjoy leading the seminar. It is so broadly defined that I can do just about anything in terms of the assignments and themes discussed, and yet still remain "pedagogically sound." Given my research interests, the course is typically a mix of the Sociology of Race 101, cultural studies, labor history, comparative race studies, and critical race theory.

However, teaching this course is not easy. One of the challenges of teaching about race and racial ideologies in the post racial moment is that many "millennials" (and others) born after the Civil Rights Movement actually believe that racism is a thing of the past. Consequently, racism and white supremacy are minor inconveniences in the present.

Undergraduates tend to not believe a thing is real unless they can see it with their own eyes. Many undergraduates, and I would suggest the general public as well, are not yet at a point where they are able to mate sociological theories with empirical reality. The sociological imagination is not yet real for them.

In order to overcome that challenge, I use video clips, examples from popular culture, the news, and other resources which demonstrate that racism and other inequalities are real--and that they have human consequences.

For example, I will be using the much discussed Hurricane Katrina photos where black people looking for food are framed as "looters" whereas whites are "finding" supplies, pictures of Obama and his wife as monkeys, signs and interviews from Tea Party rallies, the new age black face of the white female rapper Kreayshawn, racially coded and dog whistle laced speeches by Republican candidates from the 2008 and 2012 campaigns, and the "hoody politics" of the menacing black body and Trayvon Martin, to demonstrate how age old racial ideologies are both reproduced, as well as reinforced, in American society.

Given my interest in cyber racism and digital democracy, I have also been compiling helpful examples from online news media and social networking.sites. As I have written about repeatedly, websites' comments sections offer a great window into the collective political subconscious, and are rich measures of informal public opinion.

To point, here on We Are Respectable Negroes, there is a recurring commenter by the name of "OTB" who is an ideal typical case of conservative, colorblind racism in practice. On this thread for example, his comments are a pitch perfect demonstration of the logic of white racism(s) in the post Civil Rights era.

As such, I will be using his posts as a "living" example of the theories offered by social scientists such as Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Joe Feagin, Charles Gallagher, George Yancy, as well as the indispensible Omi and Winant. It is always invigorating and exciting to see the nuts and bolts of colorblind racism--what has been described as "racism without racists"--displayed so perfectly.

In total, OTB's understanding of the relationships between race, American politics, privilege, power, and history is an echo of the theories, empirical research, and historiographies that has been developed to explain how racial dynamics and the color line shifted (or not) in the decades following the Civil Rights Movement to the Age of Obama.

The simple and short story goes something like this.

War Made Easy via a Featured Reader Comment: They've Got Us in a Foggy-State in Which They Can Even "Admit" to Owning Key Points in a Connect-the-Dots Portrait of Total Evil...

I have not bumped up a reader's comment in a while. Steven Augustine's observation during our earlier conversation about white working class voters and the resilience of the false consciousness meme deserves some more attention. There he wrote:

USS Liberty? Check. October Surprise? Check. The Maine? Check. The Mossadegh/ Lumumba / "interventions", et al? Check and double-check)... shit confirmed in the frickin NYT, ferchrissakes... and rather than see these "limited hangouts" as confirmations of an entirely predictable and much larger pattern, we shrug them off as aberrations of a supposedly dark age the Gubmint has long-since outgrown!

(sfx: phlegm-rich Satanic chuckle) 

Don't feel bad, though. Our minds have been terraformed (and our material realities constricted and metered) by some of the finest amoral minds recruited from Harvard, Princeton, Yale and MIT. In fact, if the Evil Ones haven't recruited your ass by now, you can't be very good at what you do, Negro!

Damn.

One of the foundational concepts in the study of American public opinion is that attitudes are remarkably unstable. As such, they can be influenced by how questions are presented and framed. The American people are also relatively non-ideological. Here, they do not hold what students and observers of politics would understand to be a consistent worldview. There is an exception: on matters of race the American people do know how they feel, are willing to express their feelings, and their opinions are well-structured.

In total, the American people do have "values" which they ostensibly advance through the political process. But, the American people meander and muddle through the specifics of these issues, groping and feeling, trying to find their way with a relative lack of sophistication.

As I have shared here many times, I am resolute in my belief that the masses are asses. The question then becomes is the public's lack of sophistication, limited knowledge about public policy, and attraction to spectacle and empty political rhetoric cultivated or natural? Is the Culture War/Real America White right wing populism organic? Alternatively, is such zeal handed down from on high by elites? Likewise, are the symbolic politics of the Left substantive? Are the people really speaking back to Power? Does Power even care?

There is one area of public concern where this question is a settled matter. The American people are manipulated by political elites into supporting unnecessary wars and conflicts abroad. When I discuss this question with my students, and offer up the obvious--at least to my/your eyes that the political leadership class in a democracy is dependent on propaganda for legitimacy--they look shocked and upset. As I turn the knife a bit and include how their consumerist impulses are manufactured and manipulated by the dream merchants, and not an expression of an authentic self, the hurt is tangible.

I learn a good deal from my students as well. When we talk about the War on Terror, 9/11, and America's imperial exploits, they more often than not confess their ignorance about such matters. These college age students feel powerless. They have a world of information, quite literally at their fingertips, but choose not to engage it substantively.

In response to Steve's observations about the truth hiding in plain sight, and the public's complicity on these matters, I have a standard list of explanations which I offer. Our politics are sick, and this sickness can be explained by a few things:

1. There are approximately 30 million illiterate people in the United States. The politics of spectacle, culture war, and faux populism are a response to this fact.

2. Americans have been socialized into being citizen consumers in a market democracy. Consequently, they are not active, responsible, forward thinking, or virtuous.

3. There is no liberal media. There is only a corporate media. Consent is manufactured; the terrain for "approved" discourse is narrow. For example, see the howls in response to Chris Hayes' very reasonable intervention regarding the overuse of the word "hero" in regards to members of the military that he made over the Memorial Day weekend.

4. Hard news is dead. Long live soft news.

5. Information is not knowledge. All of us in the Internet age have witnessed a revolution in how information is shared and circulated. The Facebook Millennial generation have come of age in this moment and know no alternative. Unfortunately, as a society we have not developed the critical skills necessary to synthesize citizenship, information, and knowledge. Moreover, as I wrote about here, for many young people "politics" and "activism" consists of clicking "like" on Facebook or wearing plastic wristbands or hoodies. This can be parallel or even pre-political behavior. It is no substitute for substantive political engagement that involves personal commitment, risk, and material resources.

6. The public schools have utterly failed. They are producing passive citizens who are drones for the neoliberal order. The universities are complicit: they fashion an experience which is prefaced on a logic where "the customer is always right," and critical pedagogy and learning are secondary to high course enrollments, sports stadiums, and trends such as "smart classrooms," iclickers, and the empty rhetoric of "student centered" approaches to learning.

7. The dreams of digital democracy and a vibrant Internet that brought together people of different views and beliefs has not come to pass. The blogosphere and online news media are balkanized. Epistemic closure is real. This is especially true on the Right. We are (more often than not) quite literally talking to ourselves and those other folks who already agree with us.

8. The life worlds, communities, and realities of conservatives and progressives, Red State and Blue State, are increasingly divergent, separate, and apart. How can we even come together to solve common problems when basic empirical facts cannot be agreed upon? Add in the bastard marriage of radical religion in the form of Christian Dominionism to Ayn Randian libertarianism and matters are made even worse.

The sum effect of these elements is crystallized in the following ideal typical example. The public actually believes that the enemies of the American government hate the American people--notice I separate the two--because of our "freedoms."

This con is no accident. What would you add to the above list? And can this "mental terraforming" be undone?

Diversity Games: Barack Obama and the Rise of "Multiculturalism Incorporated"

Racism is an instinctive tool to capture resources and deny them to competitor "species." This is why Obama is backed by the Wall Street bankers. To them, he is a tool to safeguard their fortunes against the rising tide of public resentment. They are excellent psychologists, and psychic abusers of the popular Black mind.

They know, through their experts in PR (advertising and the management of the public mind), how the popular Black mind pines for symbols of "hope," for action heros on basketball courts and on the big screen — Will Smith saving the fantasy worlds Hollywood conjures with smoke and mirrors. Any hero in any arena can be produced to distract and quell the masses, so long as it is not an actual hero in any arena of actual power...

Obama may have some decent intentions beyond his blatant careerism, but clearly the careerism is primary, and for that he must reassure his sponsors that he can quell the public. The job he is applying for is to keep public affairs calm enough so the same select businesses and the same select gamesters can continue to make the same government-backed mega-profits.

In business circles, this is called "maintaining a stable business environment." Obama says "change" but his sponsors know this to mean "stability." "Change" is what we’ll get from the billions we are forced to pay into taxes and inflated prices that profit all too few.

Populations that have histories of being oppressed are easily duped, because they are so desperate for "relief," for "salvation."

In one of our conversations earlier this week, Cnu offered up a link to a great essay at Counterpunch which worked through the relationship between President Obama, the overclass, and a symbolic politics of racial grievance which does little to challenge deleterious, systemic, institutional, macrolevel changes in American political economy.

While I most certainly believe in the power of aggrieved and subordinate groups to resist power and hegemony, and of course to force elite actors to respond to their justice claims, we must also concede how those at the top are adept at managing conflict as a means of serving their own narrow interests.

The election of Barack Obama is central to this story. It is clear that the colorline has been renegotiated in America since the time of the founding. However, it still remains. The Civil Rights Movement was successful as much because of peoples' activism and resistance, as for how elite actors realized that Jim and Jane Crow white supremacy was a national embarrassment in the context of the Cold War.


More broadly, the Racial State evolved over time because the type of personal, intimate, and directly violent exploitation of the plantation (with its old fashioned "dominative" racism) was not suited for a growing industrialism, or many years later, an economy that would evolve into a global, service based, information age set of international markets and actors. As Wendy Somerson notes, in this model "structural racism and sexism are thus denied through visual inclusion within corporate culture."

White supremacy in the United States (and Europe) had to "evolve" from the personal to the structural and institutional if it was to remain effective at allocating resources, and the gains of the in-group and its elites were to be preserved. By comparison, South Africa's herrenvolk society failed to adapt and was subsequently torn down. The genius of American racism is how it adapted in order to survive--all the while maintaining many of the same core inequalities and hierarchies of years and decades past.

The election of Barack Obama was the culmination of this transition. Multiculturalism incorporated won out. Diversity, even a type that is driven less by "justice" and more by profit maximization and the exploitation of human capital, is taken as a given. However, there is nothing at all radical about it. Ironically, I would suggest that the election of the country's first black President is the death knell for justice claims about racial equality and redistribution.

In a time when whiteness is perceived to be under siege, and the State has been drowned in the bathtub by the Right, the narrow and tenuous coalition of white Americans who were somewhat sympathetic to the idea that racial inequality ought to be addressed through robust policy interventions are now disinterested, and in many cases, hostile to such appeals.

Part of this dynamic is a function of crude self-interest and anxieties about scarce resources in the Great Recession. A second component is a cultivated type of white racial resentment and backlash against black and brown progress (seen in the 1960s and early 1970s with the anti-busing movement; in the 1980s with the "small government," "silent majority," and "California tax revolt;" and with the angry white men culture warriors of the late 1980s and early 1990s) which the Tea Part GOP White Nationalists have grown and nurtured in the Age of Obama.

To many Americans, the symbolism of a black man as President of the United States is an epitaph for racism's death--despite all of the available evidence which demonstrates how race impacts life chances in the present. In all, many across the colorline confuse an increasingly diversified class of (token black and brown) political elites, and a myth of an inclusively diverse America cooked up by the dream merchants on Madison Avenue, with a progressive vision and politics that actually empowers people of color by addressing hard questions about the maldistribution of resources in this country--inequalities that track very closely to the dividing lines of racial hierarchy and privilege.

As I often do, what follows is a particularly timely and telling passage from the great new book The Twilight of Equality. Here, Lisa Duggan is working through the rise of neoliberalism, the Culture Wars, and the power of conservative multiculturalism as a type of commonsense for "post racial" post civil rights America.

Could it be that the election of Barack Obama was the final act in the Black and Brown Freedom Struggle, as the Right can create a narrative that racism is dead--all the while mining white racial resentment and victimhood for electoral gains? Piling on, how has this moment been perverted by white racial resentment and faux Right populism into one where a corporatist center right Democrat is skewered as a "Socialist" for not being even more slavish to the financier class? Or more broadly, that the State and the social safety net must be destroyed in the name of "efficiency" and "small government" because it serves and protects minorities, the poor, women, "liberals," gays and queers, all to the disadvantage of "real Americans?"

From the Clinton Administrations's serious efforts to recruit racial minorities and women into high-level government service, and to reduce the range of exclusions of sexual minorities, to the G. W. Bush administration's more clearly token gestures of inclusion, the rhetoric of "official" neoliberal politics shifted during the 1990s from "culture wars" alliances, to a superficial "multiculturalism" compatible with the global aspirations of U.S. business interests.

"Culture Wars" attacks and alliances did not disappear, but they receded from the national political stage in favor of an emergent rhetorical commitment to diversity, and to a narrow, formal, nonredistributive form of "equality" politics for the new millennium.

...Some proponents of "equality politics" moved away from civil rights lobbies and identity politics organizations to advocate for the abandonment of progressive-left affiliations, and the adoption of a neoliberal brand of identity/equality politics. These organizations, activists, and writers promote "color-blind" and anti-affirmative action racial politics, conservative-libertarian "equality feminism," and gay "normality"...Such a realignment would rival the 1970's "Southern Strategy" that moved phalanxes of former Democratic voters out of the New Deal coalition and into the Republican columns, largely through "culture wars" racism.

Featured Comment: "To align black people behind policies that are antiblack, in their support of a black president..."

As I occasionally do, there is a comment on my post "The Top 10 Racist Moments of the GOP Primary (So Far)" that merits further discussion. Nomad (who needs to claim his book prize) perennial critic of Barack Obama, and long time commenter here on WARN observed that:

Everything you say is true about the Republican assault on issues of concern to black people:

"the 2012 Republican candidates are stirring the pot of white racial anxiety, this is a means to a larger end—the destruction of the country’s social safety net, in support of vicious economic austerity policies, and protecting the kleptocrats and financiers at the expense of the working and middle classes."

What you fail to mention is that a Democratic president, who "happens to be black", is leading the charge. Clearly racism is being used in a novel way here; to align black people behind policies that are antiblack, in their support for a black president. Diabolical. The irony is hilarious. Tea party on one side of the political divide working against their best interests in their support for the super-rich; and black people working against their best interests in their support for a conservative black president.

I wonder if a similar list of racist moments, albeit intra-racially racist, could be compiled for the enigma in the white house? I'd nominate this moment. http://www.mediaite.com/tv/obama-to-congressional-black-caucus-stop-complaining-stop-grumbling-stop-whining/

This is a very sharp (and quite rich) observation. Partisanship colors--pardon my pun--how voters assess a given candidate's job performance and efficacy. Moreover, allowing for the historic and groundbreaking nature of Barack Obama's election, the white backlash he has experienced, his ability to code switch as he plays the black authenticity game, and given their long standing loyalty to the Democratic Party, African Americans' support of Obama makes sense. However, has that deep well of support paid any political dividends to the black community?

Certainly, Barack Obama has not engaged in the type of racial triangulation game that is typical of black conservatives like Herman Cain or Allen West (where they signal their acceptability to white people, and White political interests, by playing the exceptional pro-white negro), nor has Obama had a Bill Clinton Sister Soulja moment where he threw a black person under the proverbial bus in order to make white middle America feel comfortable.

[Well, one must ask: does the Reverend Wright exercise in realpolitik political abandonment count in that category?]

I never expected a Black radical to win the U.S. presidency--thus, my qualifier that Barack Obama is a "president who happens to be black, and not a Black president." I knew that he was a corporatist, who in another generation, would have been an Eisenhower-Rockefeller Republican.

So help me out, did folks actually believe that they were getting a black freedom fighter who was going to be the second coming of Dr. King with their vote for Obama back in 2008? And if the choice is between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, what is a better use of the black (brown, young people, poor, working class) vote strategically?

Featured Reader Comment: "He Explained to Me Why the Black Families had Nice Cars But the Houses, Not So Nice..."

Changes are here, and in the now. More changes are coming in the near future.

As signaled to by the change in the graphic at the top of We Are Respectable Negroes, I am moving forward while always acknowledging the core values of this project. And yes, I will break kayfabe a bit more more in the next few weeks and reveal some more details about what the future will hold.

But trust, one, that me Gordon and Zora are still family and they will be around either on a Blogtalk radio show or as guest editors. But also two, that at 1,000 posts (a benchmark that I never would have imagined this fun project reaching in two years), I decided to acknowledge the obvious.

'Nuff said.

One of the changes I am going to introduce is to feature those comments that I find particularly thought provoking. I have a few more in the queue, but the following comment from Fred C seemed particularly worthy of discussion given last week's convo on Sarah Palin's white nationalist infused (mis)understanding of Black Americans and our patriotism.

Thus, our inaugural featured comment. In response to Palin's nonsense, Fred C wrote:

I was seven when my family started driving through the south every year to visit my grandparents in Florida. I remember my sense of wonder at the signs for "White Only" and "Colored" on everything from water fountains to beaches. My father, not perhaps the most enlightened man but well up the scale, made an education of it. He'd pull off the main road and take us through the towns. One time, in a Black neighborhood of some little Georgia backwater, he explained to me why the Black families had nice cars but the houses, not so nice. "The car guys will lend them money, but no bank will give them a mortgage." It was the beginning of my long education in these matters. Much later, married but far from rich, and subject to bad times, my wife and I would sometimes console each other by saying, "it could be worse, we could be Black." We knew that being Black made everything much, much harder. Good for Michelle, speaking truth to power.

****

"The car guys will lend them money, but no bank will give them a mortgage."

I love that observation. Black folks may have money. But, we don't have wealth. The penchant of black folks for consumer goods makes sense given how white supremacy punished wealth accrual, but how damning and sad that the ethos of conspicuous consumption in true Freakonomics style continues to hold purchase over too many of the poor, middle, and working classes. And how vulnerable this has made blacks folks and others in this, our Great Recession.

Your thoughts?