they tell us that despite the election of the big o, there is still racial tension in america. i never would have guessed. the proof, according to a local free paper? not housing discrimination. not police brutality. not prisons filled with young black men. not racial disparities in health care. not segregated schools. no, none of these things. rather, ongoing racial tension is proved by how whites and blacks responded to michael jackson's death. blacks were more likely to celebrate him, while whites were more likely to bemoan his weirdness. sadly, though i try my best to be a "blue eyed soul brother" (i have brown eyes, but whatever) i too tended to focus on the latter category. in fact, i do believe that race (and racism) played out in the responses to his death, but race and racism play out all the time in this society, often with life and death consequences. however, when it is a matter of life and death, we don't hear about it. that way, racism can be marginalized, and its victims can be portrayed as "too sensitive," or worse, as playing the "race card." (which, by the way, beats a full house, but loses to four of a kind) in fact, whites are often the real victims of racism, to hear whites tell it. reverse racism has whites in a bind, they say. strangely, they still have most of the money and power. funny thing, this reverse racism. in fact, it seems like the reverse of racism.
so yeah, racial tension continues. you can see it in how we respond to mj's death, but only in how we respond to his death. i thought we could see it in the shooting of oscar grant and the rebellion that shook oakland in its aftermath. i thought we could see it in the case of the jena 6. i thought we could see it in the indifference shown to the victims of katrina, and to the white vigilantes who murdered innocent blacks afterward, and who, by the way, have still not been charged with a crime, despite openly laughing and gloating over their deeds. i though we could see it in rampant immigrant bashing. i thought we could see it in the "english only movement." i though we could see it in those who speak of poor white neighborhoods as "working class," and "blue collar," but who speak of poor black and latino areas as "ghettoes."
i though we could see racial tension in a lot of places, places far removed from mj's rotting corpse. but, it seems i was wrong.
yet again, i was wrong.
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One of the nation’s most prominent African American scholars, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., has accused police in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of racial profiling after he was arrested in his own home late last week. Gates is the head of Harvard’s W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and American Studies. Gates arrived at his home in Cambridge last Thursday afternoon to find his front door jammed. As he tried to pry it open, a neighbor called the police department and reported that a robbery was in progress. Gates grew frustrated when an investigating officer did not believe he was the owner of the home despite proof of residence. According to a police report of the incident, Gates called the officer a racist and said, “This is what happens to black men in America.” Eventually Gates was handcuffed and taken to the police station. Gates was charged with disorderly conduct.
TV Commentators Criticized over Racist Remarks
Brian Kilmeade, the co-host of Fox & Friends, has apologized for remarks he made on the Fox News Channel suggesting that inter-culture marriages aren’t pure. Kilmeade made the original comment on July 8.
Brian Kilmeade: “We keep marrying other species and other ethnics and other”—
Gretchen Carlson: “Are you sure you’re not suffering from some of the causes of dementia right now?”
Brian Kilmeade: “I mean, the Swedes—see, the problem is the Swedes have pure genes, because they marry other Swedes, because that’s the rule. Finland—Finns marry other Finns, so they have a pure society. In America, we marry everybody. So we’ll marry Italians and Irish.”
Dave Briggs: “OK, so this study does not apply?”
Brian Kilmeade: “Does not apply to us.”
Unity: Journalists of Color had condemned Kilmeade’s words, saying they lent credence to “the basest of white supremacist ideologies, the notion that white people and non-white people are of different species, with the white race as ‘pure.’”
Meanwhile, conservative commentator Pat Buchanan is coming under criticism for recent comments made on MSNBC during a discussion about Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor, who he claimed was an affirmative action candidate.
Pat Buchanan: “White men were 100 percent of the people that wrote the Constitution, 100 percent of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence, 100 percent of the people who died at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, probably close to 100 percent of the people who died at Normandy. This has been a country built, basically, by white folks.”
Last night, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow aired a seven-minute response repudiating Buchanan’s claims.
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