Black Lives Matter

Recently, a young black woman who worked at a food concession in a Chicago zoo lost her job after grousing on Facebook about “rude-ass white people.” What the woman doesn’t fully grasp is that rude is rude, and there’s no reason to specify the race of the offenders. It’s true that most of her customers were white, but it’s also true that if most of them had been black, she would experience rude behavior from about the same percentage of them. In short, mentioning race here added nothing to the validity of her complaint. Saying “rude people” as opposed to “rude white people” would have served her purpose just as well.

To which black folks across America would be fully justified in responding: “Welcome to my world.” In that world, race is always mentioned by white people, whether or not it has anything to with anything, even in the most benign of contexts:

“I ran out of gas and this black guy stopped and gave me a lift.”

“There was a huge black woman in front of me in line.”

“A bunch of black teenagers came into the grocery store.”

“An old black gentleman was having trouble getting out of his car.”

In none of these statements does specifying the race of the actor affect what is being communicated. And, importantly, in none of them would race be specified if the actors were white. No white person would say “a white guy stopped and gave me a lift,” or “a huge white woman in front of me...” And so on.

The days of the most egregious and obvious race-based affronts to justice and morality, as typified by Jim Crow laws and customs, are long gone -- laws and customs that openly segregated public facilities of every kind, right down to the minutiae of drinking fountains; customs that, for example, forbade professional black athletes from eating in the same restaurants and sleeping in the same hotels as their white teammates; laws/customs that kept white and black kids from going to school together, or that systematically kept blacks out of most colleges and all the professions. We’re past all that, and many young people are aghast when they learn that such an era ever existed. As condescending as it may sound, it is fair to say that many young black people – with that era as a backdrop – don’t realize how good they have it.

That is not to say they have it good. The residue of Jim Crow that they’re left with is a more pernicious and subtle form of racism that is all the more infuriating to blacks because of white blindness to it. The consensus among most white people regarding the goings-on in Ferguson, for example, was that the protests were, at the very least, an over-reaction; that the sleights and injustices about which so much anger was expressed were overstated or even imaginary; that the protesters, while having some legitimate grievances, would be better off if they’d stop complaining and get on with their lives. In short, most of my white friends and acquaintances were unable to empathize. This, despite the virtual certainty, in my opinion, that these people, being intelligent folks with healthy egos, would be among the most virulently militant about the subtle and not-so-subtle indignities they would routinely experience if their faces were to turn black. My guess is they wouldn’t be so dismissive of the anger and frustration felt by a grown man or woman who gets pushed around -- figuratively and sometimes literally – and treated like a recalcitrant child, by a young white policeman.

Which brings us to “black lives matter,” a slogan and sentiment that many white reactionaries now characterize as an aggressively racist “movement” aimed at raising up blacks and putting down whites – a sort of latter-day Black Panthers thing. Their counter-slogan – which they believe to be a piquantly effective one – is “all lives matter.” The problem with that: the fact that all lives matter has never been in question. That black lives matter has been – in a thousand ways both subtle and overt – and is in need of re-affirmation in a way that the importance and value of lives in general is not. That all lives matter is a given. That black lives matter isn’t. People justifiably feel the need to re-affirm that blacks, just like whites, are individuals with strengths and weaknesses, hopes and fears, goals and aspirations. They are – like whites – short and tall, meek and bold, smart and dumb, athletic and ungainly, wise and foolish, industrious and lazy, pretty and ugly, strong and weak. They are not interchangeable. Racial stereotyping renders them interchangeable, and says, in effect, that their individual lives don’t matter. And that’s what the black lives matter idea is pushing back against.

Black Lives Matter should not be understood as a threat, although it will undoubtedly be employed in an aggressive way here and there, but as a plea for understanding and compassion and a reminder that even in this era of comparative racial enlightenment, a subset of the population struggles daily with indignities that range from subtle put-downs to flagrant injustices because of the color of their skin. Advice for white people: (1) Don’t indulge in racial stereotyping, even when it’s thought to be benign; (2) Have empathy for those who face it every day of their lives.

Political Correctness

It has become a favorite dodge of some folks to characterize themselves as victims of political correctness when they are called out for the mean-spirited, dumb, or simply wrong things they say, and to characterize themselves as forthright and courageous for saying utterly mindless things in defiance of this PC trend.  In the good old days before political correctness took hold, they seem to be saying, a person could, for example, insult great swaths of society -- blacks, Jews. women, etc. -- openly and without remorse or reprisal.  That was before people got so persnickety about this stuff.

War on Christmas

“Nation’s Oppressed Christians Huddle Underground To Light Single Shriveled Christmas Shrub”

That’s a headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion, taking dead aim at the incessant whining of a segment of the body politic about how put upon they are by secularism, the “mainstream media,” non-Christians of various persuasions, and their all-time favorite bugaboo, political correctness. By way of reassuring these folks during this holiday (Christmas) season, I offer up the following: Between now and December 25th the words “Merry Christmas” will be spoken 1 bazillion times (that’s just a round number, of course). Hundreds of millions of person-hours will be spent in churches of various denominations, observing the “true meaning” of Christmas. There will be as many nativity scenes around town as there were in 1953; Christmas trees will be put up all across the land. Millions upon millions of Christmas presents will be opened. Glasses will be raised, lights will be strung, lavish meals will be eaten, movie classics will be watched, many of which have the word “Christmas” in their titles, like “A Christmas Carol,” “A Christmas Story,” and “White Christmas,” and Christmas music will be played and sung to distraction.  All of this, and more, will be done out in the open without any interference (or criticism) from anybody. Hello, war-on-Christmas worriers: There is no war on Christmas. If you wish to participate, no one is stopping you. If other people don’t wish to participate, that’s none of your beeswax.

What Trumpists really want

Normal people are mystified by the way Donald Trump can repeatedly say bizarre, even irrational things – he witnessed something that didn’t happen, he thinks members of one religion should be kept out of the country -- and his poll numbers go up. It’s as if a light bulb goes on over the heads of these newest Trump converts: “Wow. I knew he was a blowhard and a bigot, but now I see he’s also delusional. I’m voting for him!” Unexplainable, seemingly. But, of course, what his people see in him isn’t about any of that. It’s about his promise to “make America great again.” And by “great” what his mostly older white male followers understand him to mean is a time when people who looked like them had all the good jobs; when there weren’t all these weird non-Christian religions around; when blacks, Hispanics, and women knew their place; when political correctness didn’t prohibit decent white folks from putting down racial and ethnic minorities. You just know – because he is unable to restrain himself – that Jews will be his next target, as he explains, using “just common sense,” that they control the media, Hollywood, and the banks. This is a turn of events that in a sane world would bring his candidacy crashing to earth in a ball of fire. But it will probably just end up recruiting a whole new wing of the slack-jawed to his bandwagon. Meanwhile, it’s worth remembering that the poll numbers Trump is garnering can be a little bit misleading. Recently, those numbers showed he had 35 percent of Republican primary voters in his corner. But Republican primary voters were just 38 percent of the people interviewed in the New York Times/CBS polling. Thirty-five percent of 38 percent is about 13 percent of the electorate.

Is it terrorism? Does it matter?

A recent trend is for members of one segment of the political spectrum to accuse others of bowing to political correctness by refusing to identify terrorism as terrorism. The thought is that this refusal stems from the fear of offending members of a religious minority. But it’s important to understand the actual meaning of terrorism. This definition comes from the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies:

“Terrorism is defined as political violence in an asymmetrical conflict that is designed to induce terror and psychic fear (sometimes indiscriminate) through the violent victimization and destruction of noncombatant targets (sometimes iconic symbols). Such acts are meant to send a message from an illicit clandestine organization. The purpose of terrorism is to exploit the media in order to achieve maximum attainable publicity as an amplifying force multiplier in order to influence the targeted audience(s) in order to reach short- and midterm political goals and/or desired long-term end states.”

In other words, terrorism needs to be understood as a tactic for changing the internal politics of a country, or even conquering that country, when it’s impossible to do so by more conventional means. Not every murderous act qualifies. But for the folks who routinely call others out for refusing to call a spade a spade, the only qualification necessary is that the act be committed by a Muslim. If the act is committed by a Muslim, it’s a terrorist act. If it’s committed by a non-Muslim, it’s something else.

To the folks who say gun laws are of no use in preventing “terrorist” attacks: When a member of the unhinged stockpiles guns and thousands of bullets and uses those things to kill and injure scores of innocent people – and anyone who would do that is a member in good standing -- their reasons don’t matter. Pick one: They heard voices through their tin foil hats; they’ve pledged allegiance to the grand wazier of ISIS; they hate all members of the you-name-it minority group; they like the smell of cordite in the morning. These peoples’ thought processes are off the rails, whether or not their acts are defined as terrorism. They can’t be allowed to have guns. There’s every reason to believe that if procuring an arsenal was more difficult and involved than it is, the mad plan of the San Bernardino murderers would have been abandoned or sniffed out in advance.













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