Racism Wins Again
In the city where I live, a Black man won re-election to the office of mayor by a resounding majority. It wasn’t even close. He won by roughly 30,000 votes and got 62% of the vote. St. Paul also passed rent control, an initiative that will benefit poor people and BIPOC. That’s all good stuff. In the city I call my hometown, Bostonians elected the first female Asian-American to lead their government. It’s a monumental achievement for a city that has never had a minority for mayor. But that’s pretty much where the good news ends.
Across the river in Minneapolis, the voters also passed a rent control measure, though it is one that does not exist yet so who knows what kind of actual impact it will have. It seems they will probably re-elect Jacob Frey, an inexperienced and ineffective mayor who pretty much bungled the George Floyd situation. He also wouldn’t commit to restructuring the police department, despite saying he would vote for it. And that was the one question on the ballot that could have made significant differences for people.
The question before voters was whether or not language should be stripped from the city charter that requires a police department with set staffing numbers. Instead of that, a new department of public safety would be created (with police included, of course) that would serve a number of different needs. The department would have had mental health professionals and other progressive, innovative techniques for dealing with the public. It was defeated. Hysteria about the elimination of the police department won out.
Minneapolis wasn’t the only place where white hysteria moved votes away from progressive policies. In the suburbs north of the Twin Cities a man named Matt Audette won election to the school board. His main issue? Critical Race Theory. In fact, according to his own campaign website (which is poorly designed) he only cares about one this: stopping CRT.
He doesn’t care about school lunches, college preparedness, or even the sports teams. All he knows is that these uppity minorities are indoctrinating our youth with messages of white hate. And yes, it is all about the whites. Look at the examples he gives for what constitutes CRT. (note: none of these things are actual examples of CRT, which is a framework and not an ideology).
Man, those poor kids! LOL. If these are the best and most outrageous examples of “CRT” his campaign could find then I think the kids are probably safe. A section in a library? Really? And a sign of a fist? GTFOH. And look at the solutions he supports. “Teach the achievements and successes in racial equality in America”? Are you kidding me? If this is what success looks like I’d hate to see what they’d be willing to call failure. This line from that same page says it all: “This is why Critical Race Theory and all unacademic racial identity politics should not be in our schools. We begin Putting Our Kids First by putting them first in the classroom.” Which kids would that be? The white ones, duh. Ignoring and refusing to teach about America’s systemic racism only benefits one group of people.
The biggest example of white fear comes out of Virginia, where Trump-endorsed candidate Glenn Youngkin won the governorship. His main issue? Critical Race Theory. Never mind that it isn’t taught in schools and wouldn’t be as it’s too advanced for most kids to get. But all of this isn’t about the teaching of CRT — it’s about protecting the narrative white supremacy has created for America.
Teaching kids the accurate history of our country is vitally important to how we will behave in the future. White people, and ONLY white people, enslaved Blacks for hundreds of years in this country. Once they were freed, their rights were restricted in just about every way imaginable. Today, they are literally hunted by the police and still face incredible amounts of discrimination. Refusing to talk about this will not solve the issue. Maintaining white supremacy is very comfortable and important for white people.
That’s why a cornball like Condi Rice gets ovations for relieving white folks’ guilt. That’s kind of her thing! Here she is saying that women who push back against harassment are in danger of being snowflakes. Never mind that the men who say “geez, all these womenfolk are complaining about us — let’s just not have them around” are the PROBLEM. Like all good empty suits, Condi wants to have it both ways; sure I grew up in segregated Alabama but hey I don’t hold white folks accountable for that. Sos who’s fault was it then, Condi?
In a different kind of victory, the Atlanta Braves won the World Series last night. Baseball is a weirdly diverse sport, helped by the incredible numbers of Latinx talent that have come into the league over the last 30 years. The numbers back this up:
Obviously, there are some groups that lack representation in baseball. One of them being Native Americans. I couldn’t find any statistics on the number of indigenous people that play in MLB but I think it’s safe to say there aren’t many. And I can’t help but wonder if the teams with racist names and mascots have anything to do with it.
The Atlanta Braves is a despicable name. It’s not as bad as Redskins, of course, but it’s still pretty bad. Lots of white people don’t understand why that is. I’ll get to that later. But if ever you needed a simple example of why the name Braves is terrible, here’s Trump at the World Series rooting them on. A simple rule I live by: if Trump loves it, it’s probably horrible, racist, and/or related to him.
“Considered offensive” is doing an awful lot of work in that tweet. Why not simply say that IT IS what IT IS? The gross “tomahawk chop” is on par with blackface and pulling your eyes back to look Asian. It’s white people cosplaying another culture and ethnicity for their own entertainment. There is nothing honorable about it. It isn’t just the hand motion (which in the video above gives me creepy flashes of a rally in Berlin 90 years ago) but the accompanying tune. Here is a fantastic article on the history behind it.
I’ll give you a quick summary. The tune can probably be traced back to a series of cartoons called “Pow Wow the Indian Boy”. It’s from 1949 so you know what that means: it’s SUPER racist. I mean, get a load of this shit:
They hit just about every stereotype and problematic thing imaginable. There’s the broken, halting language. There’s the misrepresentation of clothing and tribal culture. It characterizes native people as lazy. There’s the mythical “rainmaker” character which is horrible. And while the main character, the one the white audiences are supposed to identify with, is drawn with very caucasian features, the adult natives are drawn like caricatures. Big noses, long braided hair, etc. I mean, just about every single second of these cartoons is horrible.
AND THEY WERE MEANT FOR CHILDREN! Do you want to know why white people have a lack of empathy and understanding when it comes to native issues (like team mascots)? This is exhibit A. For literally centuries, white Americans have perpetuated many racist myths about indigenous people. This was done in the name of white supremacy — that white culture is better than primitive native culture. I remember making construction paper headdresses in school and Cub Scouts.
It leads to white people doing embarrassing, cringey shit like you see in the video above. It’s incredible. And maybe the worst part is that the people in that video are Bernie supporters and probably progressive. They have deluded themselves (with the help of white supremacy) into thinking they are honoring native culture. They aren’t. They’re making a mockery of a people who were systematically genocided by white people. It also leads to incredibly stupid things like this:
Holy shit man. There’s actually more to this whole presentation but I think two minutes of this crap is enough for you to get the idea of what she was doing. That insane person is Candice Reed who teaches math at John W. North High School in Riverside, California. She’s currently on leave. This isn’t the first year that she’s done this, uhhh, performance. There are clippings from the school’s 2012 yearbook in which she is pictured in her headdress accompanied by the following quote: “Dancing from one end of the room to the other, math teacher Candice Reed wears an Indian headdress to emphasize geometry basics. ‘I find that if I tell them a story using math along the way, it’s like a memory device’! It just may stick with them forever.” Oh, I think it’s gonna stick on you for a while, Candy.
The school not only knew about this but they celebrated it as creative teaching! That explains why she is so bold and proud of what she is doing in the videos. The white people who ran her school didn’t have a problem with it so why should the white person doing it have a problem with it? It wasn’t until a student recorded her because he felt like she was going wayyyyy over the line. And now the teacher is hopefully out of a job. All the administrators who knew about this should be fired too.
Honestly, you can find countless examples of this kind of stuff. And in the comment sections of every video, you’ll also find white people saying dumb stuff like “not a big deal, everyone is too sensitive”. You may even get a native person or two claiming it doesn’t offend them. But I assure you, they don’t speak for everyone. You do not have to be the target of racism and hate to be bothered by it. When I see crap like this I am embarrassed to be white. I revile so much of what white Americans have done in this country. But what bothers me the most is that my fellow white people will not hear it, accept it, or do anything to stop it.
Last night across America, racism won again. White supremacy seems to be nearly undefeated. Sure, there have been a few examples where white Americans have lived up to their ideals. But it’s staggeringly small. It’s a stark reminder that when confronted with facing systemic racism and dismantling it, white people will choose the comfort and familiarity of supremacy over change.
Honestly, there’s nothing more American than that.