Category Archives: Race and Ethnicity
Racism Is Real Reply
White Privilege: The New Frontier of White Guilt Reply
Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance, discusses the concept of “white privilege”–where it came from, what it means, and why it’s absurd.
Is America Racist? Reply
Is America racist? Is it — as President Barack Obama said — “part of our DNA”? Author and talk-show host Larry Elder examines America’s legacy of racism, whether it’s one we can ever escape, and in the process offers a different way of looking at things like Ferguson, crime, police and racial profiling.
A Brief History of White Privilege, Racism and Oppression in America Reply
Why I Don’t Want to Become a Minority Reply
Lana Lokteff argues that every white country is being forced to “diversify” by importing millions of non-Europeans into their nation. Lana tells why she doesn’t want to become a White minority.
Why I Am Not A White Nationalist Reply
An interesting new piece from Jack Donovan.
I generally think that WN is to race and immigration what the religious right was to the sexual revolution and secularization of US society in the postwar era. It’s a backlash against prevailing currents that amounts to swimming against the tides. Only WNs are far less wealthy, numerous, popular, or influential than the religious right was in its heyday.
I think the core argument that guys like Greg Johnson, Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer make (“Should whites allows themselves to become a minority in their historic homelands surrounded by other populations with deep seated historical grudges against whites?”) is a valid one and one that should be heard without vilification of those making the argument. And Islamic immigration is an issue that transcends racial boundaries.
But I still think it’s a one-dimensional way of thinking.
More…
De-Stereotyping Anarchism as a “White Ideology” Reply
By Extaneous Thinker
It’s a Social Construct
It’s happened many times before. That awkward moment sitting in that one meeting for [insert organization here]. Then, as you question the direction/tactics because you don’t believe in the politics of demand, you not only become discovered as an anarchist, but also criticized for it. I think it’s too many a time when I was told “anarchism is a white ideology” (whatever that means); “the only anarchists are white”; “anarchism is a privileged political philosophy”; you get the point.
Thinking this way, though, has some ‘truth’ in it. The truth is that none of these claims are true to begin with. But in addition to this, it illustrates the perspective of just how strong media narratives are. It points out that this stereotype (because that is what it really is) is just the same old story pushed and propagated by the media. When one speaks of anarchism, immediately organizers/activists think of black dressed white dudes (never mind you can’t see their face), who go around and breaking windows. They think of anarchism only as how the media spins it off; as black bloc tactics that end in chaos, as a mess.
Never mind that Mao Zedong and many Chinese socialists were at first, anarchist. Never mind that the Mexican Revolution was mainly provoked by mestizo anarchist Flores Magon; never mind that Japanese anarchism took a surge by Noe Itō a feminist and organizer in her own right; never mind the mutualista societies in Mexican and Black communities in the United States; never mind the stateless societies in Latin America, both intentional communities and prior to colonial contact; never mind the Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz, who played a role in the Syrian Revolution; never mind the Rojava Revolution itself, a plural society of Syrian Kurds and Arabs in democratic confederation; never mind the societies not mentioned here.
Sorry, Everyone, America Isn’t That Racist Reply
A couple of older articles by John McWhorter and Orlando Patterson make similar though less conservative arguments as this article.
By Greg Jones
The Federalist
It’s called “proof by example,” and it happens all the time. We take one event and point to it as evidence of a trend or, even worse, a universal fact—a dog attacked my child, therefore all dogs are vicious and should be put down. Despite its popularity, particularly in political debate, proof by example is a logical fallacy. But logic is officially an endangered species in today’s hyperpartisan political environment.
Recent events nationwide, particularly the cold-blooded murder of nine black churchgoers in Charleston, South Carolina, at the hands of a revoltingly racist white supremacist, have propelled this faulty reasoning to new heights. Dangerous ones, in fact: the conversation surrounding race in America has rapidly evolved into a hyperbolic echo chamber into which today’s pundits, politicians, and professors repeatedly shout their false narrative.
OMGs, Guys, We’re So Racist!
The Washington Post’s Eugene Robinson declared, “America will only end racism when it stops being racist.” If anyone is guilty of proof by example, it’s Robinson: “The gunman who so coldly killed those innocent worshipers at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church did not exist in a vacuum. He inhaled deeply of the race hatred that constantly bubbles up like foul gas from a sewer.”
Things are so bad that The New York Times’s Timothy Egan proposed that Barack Obama apologize on behalf of his country for slavery. You read that correctly. The president didn’t do that, but he did remind us that “racism remains a blight that we have to combat together.”
The most serious accusation, however, was lobbed from what has become the most ridiculously reactionary arena in all of American cultural and political life: academia. In response to the Charleston slayings, Occidental College Professor Caroline Heldman labeled America a “white supremacist society.” You hear that? Constant racism; America is a sewer; we are all white supremacists. Apparently the America of 2015 is identical to the America of 1860.
The Data Contradicts These Spurious Claims of Mass Racism
News to me, and if I had to guess to 99 percent of the other 300-plus million Americans that peacefully coexist with members of all races day in and day out. Unless, of course, I am so lucky as to “exist in a vacuum” of peace and tranquility light years beyond what most Americans experience. Judging from my neighborhood, and a few commonly ignored statistics, I highly doubt it.
The Oppression of Black People, The Crimes of This System and the Revolution We Need Reply
A article from the Revolutionary Communist Party that defends the hard left position on race in the USA.
Revolution
“The young man was shot 41 times while reaching for his wallet”…“the 13-year-old was shot dead in mid-afternoon when police mistook his toy gun for a pistol”… “the unarmed young man, shot by police 50 times, died on the morning of his wedding day”… “the young woman, unconscious from having suffered a seizure, was shot 12 times by police standing around her locked car”… “the victim, arrested for disorderly conduct, was tortured and raped with a stick in the back of the station-house by the arresting officers.”
Does it surprise you to know that in each of the above cases the victim was Black?1
If you live in the USA, it almost certainly doesn’t.
Think what that means: that without even being told, you knew these victims of police murder and brutality were Black. Those cases—and the thousands more like them that have occurred just in the past few decades—add rivers of tears to an ocean of pain. And they are symptoms of a larger, still deeper problem.
But some today claim that America is a “post-racial society.” They say the “barriers to Black advancement” have been largely overcome. Many go so far as to put the main blame for the severe problems faced by Black people today on…Black people themselves. Others claim that better education, or more traditional families, or religion, or elections will solve things.
So the questions must be sharply posed: what really IS the problem? What is the source of it? And what is the solution?
This special issue of Revolution newspaper will answer those questions. We’ll show how the oppression of Black people has been at the very heart of the fabric and functioning of this country, since its beginning and up to the present time, and what has actually caused these centuries of suffering. We’ll analyze the massive struggles waged against this oppression, showing why, even when they’ve won concessions, their powerful call for justice has been betrayed by the system each time—and what lessons can be drawn for a revolutionary struggle that actually could win liberation. We’ll get into how a revolution could deal with and overcome that oppression, bringing in an entirely different, and far better, system as part of getting to a whole new, emancipated world. We’ll analyze other programs and show how anything short of revolution is a false path and a dead end. And we’ll point to why such a revolution is possible—yes, even in the U.S.—and what must be done to actually prepare for and carry out such a revolution.
Afro-Colombians Face Genocidal Attacks from United States-Backed Death Squads Reply
US imperialism is what those who are genuinely concerned about the mass killing of people with black and brown skin should be protesting, not Milo Yiannopolous and Ann Coulter.
By D. Amari Jackson
Atlanta Black Star
On December 20, 1996, in the Colombian riverside village of Riosucio, the mass killings of Afro-Colombians began. At the time, though the country’s relentless civil war between the government and rebel groups had raged for decades, much of the violence had spared the rural, mineral-rich region of Choco where 85 percent of residents are Afro-Latino. That would brutally change as paramilitary death squads—backed by powerful government and commercial interests both in Colombia and the United States—murdered hundreds and displaced thousands in response to the establishment of residential land rights by Afro-Colombians in Riosucio and nearby towns. The violence would continue and, despite a November 2016 treaty officially ending the five-decade conflict, consume the region while substantially contributing to the current displacement of 2 million Afro-Colombians.
Praise of Folly Podcast #35: South Africa in Review: Before and After Apartheid Reply
Todd Lewis and I discuss South Africa before and after Apartheid.
Anti-imperialism and anti-racism need to be more than replacing the rule of “their bad guys” with the rule of “our good guys.”
Round-table Episode #1: Race Realism Reply
Todd Lewis is joined by Keith Preston (anarchist), Sean Gabb (classical liberal) and Alex Fontana (altright) to discuss Race Realism.
The Alt-Right vs. Black Conservatism Reply
Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer and black conservative leader Diante Johnson demonstrate what civilized inter-ideological and interracial discourse looks like.
What is this Hotep and Alt-Right alliance? Reply
Hotep Nation
Over the past few months on Twitter people have noticed that a few Hoteps and I have become quite friendly with white nationalists / Alt-Right. People don’t understand it so allow me to take this time to explain.
My Take on the “Muslim Travel Ban” Reply
A number of people have for my views on the so-called “Muslim travel ban” imposed by the Trump administration. Here goes:
Statistically, the evidence shows that right-wing terrorists have been slightly more violent in the years since 9-11 than Islamists, at least in the US obviously. But the meaning I take from this data is that the neocons and other hawks are blowing the Islamic terrorism threat way out of proportion, while liberals and the Left blow the right-wing terrorism threat out of proportion. Both groups need these false narratives to be true for ideological reasons.
The neocons and other hawks want a permanent war against Islam and the Left wants a permanent war against whitey, so there always has to be some looming threat on the horizon. The real violence is the US comes mostly from inner city gangs that murder each other over drug dealing disputes, from fights and domestic violence that spirals out of control, and from the mentally ill or lone nuts like Adam Lanza, Dylan Roof, or Omar Mateen.
September 11, 2001 was a singular but spectacular incident that has predictably kept plenty of people up in arms ever since. The OKC bombing in ’95, which killed about 150, had the same impact on the Left. I remember how after OKC the Left was saying many more such acts were just around the corner. But over 20 years later there’s been no such thing. The same thing happened with 9-11. I remember people talking about how there was going to be nuclear destruction of US cities and terrorism with bioweapons and all kinds of stuff. But 15 years later there’s only been a handful of incidents like Orlando, San Bernardino, and Ft. Hood that were perpetrated by lone nuts or small groups of friends acting as freelancers.
Chicago 1969: When Black Panthers aligned with Confederate-flag-wielding, working-class whites Reply
By Colette Gaiter
The Conversation
In the 2016 presidential election, Donald Trump won the white vote across all demographics except for college-educated white women. He did especially well among working class white voters: 67 percent of whites without a college degree voted for him.
Some post-election analysis marveled at how the white working class could vote against its own interests by supporting a billionaire businessman who is likely to support policies that cut taxes for the rich and weaken the country’s social safety net. Since the New Deal, the Democratic Party has been seen as the party of working people, while Republicans were considered the party of the elites. Donald Trump was able to flip this narrative to his advantage. Election 2016 balkanized issues and made it seem impossible to work on racism, sexism, poverty and economic issues all at once. A core question moving forward for social justice advocates and the Democratic Party is how they can move beyond identity politics and attract working-class voters of all races, building stronger coalitions among disparate groups.
One place to look for inspiration and instruction might be 1960s social movements that understood the power of alliances across identities and issues. During this period, a radical coalition formed that might seem impossible today: A group of migrant southerners and working-class white activists called the Young Patriots joined forces with the Black Panthers in Chicago to fight systemic class oppression.
So how did this alliance form? And how can its lessons be applied to today’s political moment?
Drug War Prisoners are Political Prisoners Reply
The “war on drugs” is the third worst domestic policy the United States has pursued in the entire history of the nation, after slavery and the ethnic cleansing of the indigenous people. Drug prohibition is the modern version of crusades against witchcraft. https://www.amazon.com/Ceremonial-Chemistry…/dp/0815607687
If you go to a university library, you can find a good number of works critiquing the drug war from a scholarly perspective. There’s also a lot of popular level works of that type. It all depends on the angle you want to take from the perspective of criticizing the drug war. My personal favorite when it comes to describing the police state aspect of the drug war is Richard Lawrence Miller’s “Drug Warriors and Their Prey.” There are other works that look at the issue of drugs from a medical and scientific perspective and criticize the drug war from that angle. The best organization that I know of that opposes the drug war is Law Enforcement Against Prohibition. It’s an organization of former cops, judges, prosecutors, narcotics agents, prison wardens, and other veterans of the drug war that want to end it.
“The New Jim Crow” by Michelle Alexander discusses the impact of the drug war on blacks, particularly inner city blacks. There hasn’t been a policy that the US has ever pursued other than slavery that did more harm to blacks, although I disagree with the way the Left frames their critique of the drug war (to the degree they pay any attention to this issue at all) in terms of “the drug war is racist” and leave it at that. Pointing out the racial disparities and impact of the drug war is great, but the drug war is much more than that. You can’t really thoroughly criticize the drug war without criticizing virtually every aspect of US government, politics, economics, foreign policy, culture, history, etc.
Richard Spencer vs. Roland Martin Reply
The controversial leader of the National Policy Institute goes head to head with interviewer Roland Martin.
Dear Blacks, Latinos & Gays Reply
This is a must watch.
Please don’t buy into the left’s hysteria about Trump.
“Black Lives Matter has a plantation mentality” 2
So says former Black Panther leader Elaine Brown. Here’s the money quote:
“When it first formed, armed BPP members patrolled Oakland neighbourhoods – in their iconic blue-shirt, leather jacket, black beret combo – to keep an eye on the police. They were caricatured as violent militants, but they were standing up for rights as old as the Constitution itself. Newton, a law student, made himself an expert on gun law. Whenever the cops piped up, he’d blast them with the Second Amendment, Supreme Court judgements, chapter and verse: ‘I will observe you carrying out your duties whether you like it or not!’
By Tom Slater
Spiked Online
“I don’t know what Black Lives Matter does, so I can’t tell you how it compares to what the Black Panther Party was. I know what the BPP was. I know the lives we lost, the struggle we put into place, the efforts we made, the assaults on us by the police and government – I know all that. I don’t know what Black Lives Matter does. So if you can tell me, I’ll give you my thoughts.’
So says Elaine Brown, activist, singer and former chairwoman of the Black Panther Party, talking to me from her home in Oakland, California. She doesn’t like my question. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Black Panther Party, a revolutionary, socialist, black-power organisation formed in Oakland by then college students Huey Newton and Bobby Seale. And, as journalists scrabble to pen pieces about ‘what’s changed’, cack-handed comparisons abound.
I ask Brown about Black Lives Matter, the movement that erupted in the wake of the shooting of Mike Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in Ferguson, Missouri, in 2014. This nebulous hashtag-come-protest movement has been compared – both by its supporters and detractors – with the BPP; it’s either hailed as a continuation of the struggle or slammed as a resurgence in ‘divisive’, ‘militant’ black nationalism. Talking to Brown it becomes clear that both sides give BLM too much credit.
‘There is no comparison’, she says. ‘The next wave of young people running out here, who are complaining and protesting about the murders of young black men and women by the police all over the country, they will protest but they will not rise up in an organised fashion, with an agenda, to create revolutionary change… We advocated community self-defence organisations to be formed, so that we would not be assaulted by the police, so that we would bear arms and assume our human rights.’
A Native American White Nationalist? 2
Anti-Fascist News has been engaging in some lazy investigative journalism about me; either that or they’re running a deliberate disinformation campaign. Given Antifa’s track record of cultish, conspiracy-theory behavior, either or both could be true.
For the uniformed, Antifa is a network of Communists and anarcho-communists who are self proclaimed anti-racists and antifascists. While they hope to prevent the second coming of Adolf Hitler and Nazism, they tend to have a hard time finding actual fascists and spend a great deal of time policing leftwing political groups and movements, where they attempt to expel anyone and everyone who doesn’t adopt their particular brand of anarcho-communism. The predictable results of their demands for ideological purity on the left are fractured political movements full of suspicion and paranoia. A very brief overview of the authoritarian left and its history will show you little but petty infighting, expulsions, fracturing, and splintering, which will leave you wondering to what degree their movements are run by Cointelpro. They are the McCarthyists of the left, checking under the bed for fascists and monitoring their supposed friends and allies for any signs that they don’t toe the line and agree with their narrow set of views.
Some things they had to say about me: More…
