More and more people are realizing the futility of trying to work “within the system.”
Category Archives: Race and Ethnicity
A Radical Alternative to Whiteness Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
Is it just me or do white people kind of suck lately? I mean more than usual. That’s not racist, I use to be one. I sort of still am, I guess. More on that later. It kind of seems like white folk have fallen into two equally obnoxious sub-species. There’s the White Alpha Douche, bitching like a 13 year old emo kid that he’s the real victim because everybody else is playing the fucking victim card and that’s his card. Then there’s the equally tiresome Squishy White Apology Addict, who’s just terribly terribly sorry about all the savagery his ancestors have dished out to minorities, but now he looks to the Noble Savages and Magical Negroes to show him how to walk and talk and censor people like me for not stepping in line. He’s probably banning me again from Facebook as we speak for self-identifying as a tranny and patting himself on the back for being part of the solution.
Both of these unbearable archetypes are offensively one dimensional and, lets face it, downright racist in their shallow world view. The first one blames all the world’s woes on people of color, and the second relies completely on this same coalition of minorities to save him from his ancestral evil ways. Black folks have enough trouble getting home from the grocery store without getting shot full of ketamine and chucked in the back of a police cruiser without having to choose between smacking us or holding our hand. Why can’t we just get our shit together? Well, believe it or not, it’s not all our fault. Not exactly anyway.
Ungovernable: An Interview with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin Reply
Black Rose Anarchist Federation
Author and independent writer William C. Anderson interviews veteran organizer and former Black Panther and political prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin on the current political crisis, fascism and rising relevance of Black anarchism. We also urge you to generously contribute towards a fundraising campaign organized by William to support Lorenzo and his partner JoNina Ervin. Both are movement elders who’ve inspired generations of rebels and are in need of support with their living and medical expenses.
Introduction and Interview by William C. Anderson
The novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has highlighted the daily disasters of capitalism. A lack of healthcare, a safe environment, housing, and food are an everyday question for a growing segment of vulnerable people. This has brought about a noticeable interest in anarchism for many. The failures of the state were made plain by ineffective solutions, willful neglect, and utter disregard for human life.
University of Wisconsin graduate student resigns from teaching role, admits she falsely claimed Black identity Reply
Transracialism is apparently becoming a thing. So be it.
By Kaelan Deese
The Hill
A University of Wisconsin-Madison (UW) graduate student resigned from a teaching position after they admitted on social media to falsely claiming to be a person of color.
CV Vitolo-Haddad apologized for the claims in two posts on the writer platform Medium last week and and said that they were leaving their post as co-president of the university’s Teaching Assistants’ Association (TAA), according to CNN.
“So deeply sorry for the ways you are hurting right now because of me,” Vitolo-Haddad said in a post Sept. 6. “I have let guesses about my ancestry become answers I wanted but couldn’t prove. I have let people make assumptions when I should have corrected them.”
Vitolo-Haddad published a second post on Sept. 11, stating they were of southern Italian/Sicilian heritage.
“It was my choice and error to identify any differently,” they wrote.
MSNBC blames BERNIE for Biden’s flagging Latino support as Biden plays Despacito Reply
The objective of MSDNC is to ensure that the neoliberal/neocon alliance maintains permanent rule while deflecting mavericks, loose cannons, and dissidents from both sides.
Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti react to the MSNBC report that makes excuses for Biden’s poor performance with Hispanic and Latinx voters, especially in Florida.
The Crisis in Civil Rights Best Books and Articles on Race, Police, and the Welfare State Reply
A Judge Asked Harvard to Find Out Why So Many Black People Were In Prison. They Could Only Find 1 Answer: Systemic Racism 2
The problem with “systemic racism” analysis of this kind is that, while not factually wrong on its face, no context is provided. The assumption is that the present system would be fine if only it were less racist, which has the effect of obscuring and obfuscating critiques of “systemic capitalism” or “systemic statism.” Actually, the current system would still suck out the ass even if it were 100% non-racist. Economic policies that are intended to create more poor people will inevitably produce more poor black and brown people, who will be more likely to form oppositional cultures and come under attack from the state.
State policies that create more criminal laws will inevitably produce more poor black and brown people who run afoul of the law (and more people of all races, classes, and cultures who are attacked by the state as well). Progressives and liberals cannot have their cake and eat it too. They cannot have less systemic racism involving poor minorities and have gun control, drug prohibition, laws against selling loose cigarettes, gambling and prostitution prohibition, stringent regulations of self-employment activities like hair braiding and nail-polishing, truancy laws, a huge range of traffic offenses, housing policies that create homelessness, etc., etc., etc.
By Michael Harriot
The Root
The Struggle for Bottom Unity in an Age of Division Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
“The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.”
-Karl Hess
“We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.”
-Fred Hampton
Solidarity is a bitch when everyone who can afford a knife is slitting each other’s throat. That’s the nasty little limerick that keeps playing on repeat in my skull like a mantra as populist grassroots uprisings devolve into bitter proxy wars between roaming tribes of bitter proles, killing each other over which oligarch’s name they have scrawled across their battle flags. Everyone wants to pick sides. Everyone is trolling for convenient scapegoats. I just see poor people killing poor people while two sick rich candidates arrange their corpses into clever platforms to stand on and promote more war from. The splintering of the George Floyd Uprisings into partisan turf warfare doesn’t just rip up my already bleeding heart because I had so much hope for the revolutionary potential now being squandered. It kills me because I have people on both sides of these gorey shenanigans and they should both be on the same damn team. All poor people should be, regardless of race or even politics.
Trump Declares War On Critical Race Theory 2
“Please, please, vote for me!”-Donald Trump
Latinos Flee Biden, Handing Trump Lifeline To Presidency 1
Are Latinos going to be the new “white ethnics?”
William Barr: ‘I don’t think there are two justice systems’ Reply
I would be willing to concede for the sake of argument that there is only one system and that the system sucks so fuck you Fat Billy, you double-chinned slob.
By Katelyn Polantz, Caroline Kelly and Christina Carrega
CNN
Attorney General William Barr, in an exclusive interview on CNN, broadly defended the actions of police, saying shootings of Black Americans often weren’t racially motivated and weren’t as common as public demonstrations have made them seem.
“I don’t think there are two justice systems,” Barr said in a sometimes contentious interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer.” “I think the narrative that the police are in some epidemic of shooting unarmed black men is simply a false narrative and also the narrative that’s based on race.”
Barr acknowledged, however, that at times it created different situations for Black and White Americans.
America’s Secret War On Black Anarchism in Somalia Reply
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
“All power is truly in the hands of the people, and in the end the people will win.”
-Kuwasi Balagoon
With November rapidly approaching and a Biden victory appearing more and more plausible, Donald Trump, our petulant man-child in chief, looks to have chosen the Culture War as his Alamo, forgoing his previously hip harangues against those plague spewing Chinese communists for more homegrown boogeymen. It’s now Chicago, not Beijing, that offers the true threat to American exceptionalism, and two time honored tropes of American conservative bigotry in particular have been dusted off to frighten elderly white suburbanites to their diseased polling places, the Blacks and the Anarchists. To hear Trump and company tell the tale, our Democratically run cities are being burned to the ground by a motley crew of nappy-headed Willie Hortons and their lawless Antifa-fied honky allies, and for once, the GOP has set their sites on a legit threat to their morally bankrupt way of life.
26 Charts Indicating Racial Disparities in the US 2
Business Insider
Nationwide protests in recent weeks have rekindled a roaring public discourse about racial inequality in America.
George Floyd’s death in police custody on May 25 let loose a groundswell of public rage about the way Black Americans are policed. But it also sparked a deeper conversation about the way they experience all aspects of modern life, whether it’s underrepresentation in college attainment rates, or over-representation in COVID-19 hospitalizations.
Extensive academic research and data collected by the federal government and researchers has documented numerous ways that Black Americans experience life in the United States differently from their white counterparts.
It’s called “systemic” racism because it’s ingrained in nearly every way people move through society in the policies and practices at institutions like banks, schools, companies, government agencies, and law enforcement.
The resulting data show that these disparities exist along nearly every facet of American life, including employment, wealth, education, home ownership, healthcare, and incarceration.
Kamala Harris Is No Ally to Transwomen 2
By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit
Exile in Happy Valley
“I have never really understood exactly what a ‘liberal’ is, since I have heard ‘liberals’ express every conceivable opinion on every conceivable subject. As far as I can tell, you have the extreme right, who are fascist racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan, who come right out and let you know where they’re coming from. And on the opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two points is the liberal. As far as I’m concerned, ‘liberal’ is the most meaningless word in the dictionary.”
-Assata Shakur
“It’s not progressive to be soft on crime”
-Kamala Harris
David Graeber on Trump: Racist, But Anti-Imperialist Reply
David Graeber, a leading left-anarchist academic, has an interesting take on Trump. Read the Twitter thread here.
He is a pure opportunist but sincere in two ways: 1.he is genuinely and sincerely racist; 2. He is genuinely and sincerely anti-imperialist at least in the US empire’s current form.
On Trump’s anti-imperialism:
I was thinking of writing about how Trump tried to dismantle the US empire and basically failed. He’s a fascist but the only good thing about him was he did want to dismantle the post-45 treasury-bond – treaty system – US bases nexus, he was unable to do so.
He tried all sorts of things, ranging from pulling US troops out of Korea & Afghanistan (his aides blocked him), undermining NATO, encouraging a move away from the dollar as US reserve currency, destaffing the State Dept… but it didn’t work, yeah.
We must learn to distinguish moral turpitude, violence, militarist tendencies, and “imperialism/empire” which is a specific shake-down structure of domination and extraction.
I think starting wars is different than imperialism. Minor powers start wars too. He’s trying to dismantle the institutional system that’s existed since the ’40s which guarantees the US a unique hegemonic role.
Systemic Racism & the Data Reply
This is a pretty “liberal” vs “conservative” discussion on race issues.
Watch Braver Angels’ July 22 American Public Forum event on the data surrounding Systemic Racism. Featuring Associate Professor of Political Science at Kentucky State University Wilfred Reilly and Assistant Professor of Sociology at Grand Dominion University Roderick Graham. Moderated by Braver Angels National Ambassador John Wood, Jr. This event was produced in partnership with the National Institute for Civil Discourse and 1776 Unites.
Revolution and American Indians: “Marxism is as Alien to My Culture as Capitalism” Reply
Marx actually referred to indigenous peoples like the Native Americans, Scottish highlanders, and Basques, along with hunter-gather societies and native tribes in the colonial era generally, as “non-historical peoples.”
Russell Means’ autobiography is a great read. He writes about, among many other things, getting into armed confrontations with the FBI, being chased by Sandinista war planes, and punching out leftists who heckled him on university campuses. This guy walked the walk.
By Russell Means
The following speech was given by Russell Means in July 1980, before several thousand people who had assembled from all over the world for the Black Hills International Survival Gathering, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is Russell Means’s most famous speech.
A member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, he was perhaps the most outsized personality in the American Indian Movement, beginning with the 1973 occupation of Wounded Knee. He also had an acting career beginning with his role as Chingachgook in Last of the Mohicans. He passed away Oct 22nd, 2012 at the age 72.
“The only possible opening for a statement of this kind is that I detest writing. The process itself epitomizes the European concept of “legitimate” thinking; what is written has an importance that is denied the spoken. My culture, the Lakota culture, has an oral tradition, so I ordinarily reject writing. It is one of the white world’s ways of destroying the cultures of non-European peoples, the imposing of an abstraction over the spoken relationship of a people.
‘They never went away’: reclaiming Indigenous names from a colonial past – a photo essay Reply
The true test of whether an individual, movement, ideology, organization, or government is authentically anti-imperialist is their stance on indigenous peoples’ rights. Virtually every regime in the world, even the most liberal ones, have awful histories and policies on indigenous peoples’ issues.
By Annette Ruzicka
The Guardian
DOJ Finds Yale DISCRIMINATES Against White And Asian Students Reply
Most people aren’t nuanced enough to recognize that systemic racism against black and brown people can exist in some sectors (like the economy and criminal justice), against white and Asian people in other sectors (like higher education) with both of these happening in the wider context of globalized multicultural technocratic statism and rainbow corporate neoliberalism.
‘We’re not an enemy of the Black community’: Cubans rally to support NuLu business Reply
Some Black Panther groups used to do this in the 60s and 70s. It’s nothing new.
By Sarah Ladd and David J. Kim
Louisville Courier Journal
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — More than 100 members of Louisville’s Cuban community gathered at La Bodeguita de Mima, 735 E. Market St., Sunday to rally in support of the immigrant-owned restaurant.
The rally came after a controversial letter from Black Lives Matter protesters laid out demands that aim to improve diversity in NuLu, which is known for its locally owned shops and restaurants.
Fernando Martinez, a partner of the Olé Restaurant Group, publicly denounced the letter’s demands on Facebook, calling them “mafia tactics” used to intimidate business owners. On Thursday, a small group of protesters gathered outside his restaurant, La Bodeguita de Mima, in protest.
For about 10 minutes on Sunday, Martinez gave a passionate speech to the crowd with his mother and relatives standing alongside him.
Coleman Hughes on Race, Black Lives Matter, Policing, Trump Reply
This is a good discussion.
The Ten Core Demographics Revisited Ten Years Later Reply
Ten years ago, I identified what I considered to be the “ten core demographics” that proponents of the ideas we discuss here at ATS will have to reach in order to eventually find the Holy Grail. The original piece is available here. It is interesting to evaluate the status of each of these ten demographics (which are really collections of sub-demographics) a decade later in light of the current uprising. Here is where things seem to stand. The parts in italics are from the original piece.
