NPR interviewed a dude this morning who said all these things. This is my translations of what I heard at 7 AM.
What you say: Race relations were better in America 8 years ago.
What I hear: Black folk sure got uppity when Obama got elected.*
What you say: Make American Great Again!
What I hear: Put women back in the home!
What you say: Confederate Flag is my heritage!
What I hear: My racist traitorous heritage is more important than your safety.
What you say: Robert E. Lee was a hero.
What I hear: I'm a traitorous fuckface.
What you say: A muslim woman in conservative dress desecrated the flag on my mailbox!
What I hear: I am a liar. Also, the flag was the dixie swatztika, I pulled a gun and got her arrested. I'm blind to my privilege.
What'd I miss?
* Note: This is the polite version.I hear something far worse.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
What you say: (The whole interview)
ReplyDeleteWhat I hear: I know you're hearing the barely-veiled subtext of what I'm actually saying. Of course I know. I'm gloating about the fact that I can say it and there's not a damn thing you can do.
Sometimes I do seriously wonder if race relations were "better"* a decade ago, and not unconnected to Obama's term. Not because Obama did anything, of course, but because progress always begets backlash, and great, very visible and symbolic progress creates backlash in exponential and entrenched ways.
ReplyDeleteAlso highly symbolic progress creates room for hidden atrocity and oppression that has always existed to get dragged out into the light. And "relations" between offenders and victims are always strained when the truth of abuse comes out.
*"Better" in terms of race relations is such a deeply loaded, contextual and subjective qualifier.
(Note: this is me musing based on adjacent thinking, of course, and in no way an aoology of the racist fuckwits targetted above who are insinuating black people somehow made racism happen. )
Tony Lower-Basch Agreed. That racist fuckwit. This election, sure, is about smart verse dumb. But its also about hate versus inclusion.
ReplyDeleteMo Jave Maybe! Also, cell phones cameras and Obama's AG's have made cop on PoC violence a lot more visible. I don't believe that it has increased, but that we're seeing it a lot more.
Mo Jave: There is a lot of room for people to delude themselves (particularly about the foreign country of the past) by bad accounting.
ReplyDeleteTo wit: If there is the certain threat of massive backlash on the path toward racial justice, that should be considered a sunk cost. It is a huge, violent problem in 2016, now that we're actually seeing the backlash play out. It was a huge, violent problem in 2007 when it was just waiting in the wings.
The problem doesn't get created in 2008, because the problem isn't "These violent racists didn't get their way, so they're acting out." The problem is "There are violent racists who will act out if they don't get their way." That problem is measurably made worse by giving them their way in search of temporary peace.