Category: racism

24 “Black rage” and “self restraint”

October 2, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · crommunism · race · racism

Last week I received a compliment (of sorts) from a Twitter follower who found my level of self-restraint remarkable when dealing with a particularly odious and clueless post from a Men’s Rights forum. This person marveled at my ability to maintain a sense of calm purposefulness while examining and disemboweling an argument that was built on a factual foundation so shaky as to inspire epistemic vertigo in anyone who read it. This person confided to me that ze would not have been able to keep hir cool in the face of such an outrageously fallacious and inflammatory argument.

While my usual policy with compliments is to thank the giver for taking the time to say so, I felt a twinge inside me that was clearly the initial birth pangs of this post.

I am, if I can be a trustworthy adjudicator of my own behaviour, a fairly calm person by nature. Years of putting my foot in my mouth (and dealing with the social consequences thereof) have engendered an instinct to think before speaking. My time spent on the internet has inculcated in me an instinct to keep my guard up and maintain a sense of ironic detachment from most things, particularly where race is concerned. Being the biggest kid on the playground meant that I had to learn quite early to control my temper lest I hurt someone smaller than me. I’m also profoundly secure with who I am and what I’m doing in my life, to the point where most of what happens on the internet is just occasionally-irritating noise. … Continue Reading

3 Sikivu Hutchinson in Vancouver this Saturday

September 27, 2012
by Crommunist
· anti-racism · blog · critical thinking · feminism · race · racism · Vancouver Events

If you’re not reading the Black Skeptics blog, I have just one question.

If you are reading, you’re already well acquainted with the perfect blend of passion, fact, and relentless courage that is the writing of Dr. Sikivu Hutchinson. You may have even seen her in this discussion with Richard Dawkins:

If you’re in the Vancouver area, this Saturday (September 29th) is an opportunity to see Sikivu live, and to meet her. You can imagine how I felt when I first found out:

A man shocked at winning at the Price is Right

So if you’re free on Saturday at 4 pm, head down to UBC Campus to see Dr. Hutchinson speak about humanism, gender politics, and racism:

According to an African proverb, “until the lion learns how to speak the hunter will always be a hero.” In the U.S., the right wing conservative backlash against social justice, abortion, family planning, undocumented immigrant rights, and ethnic studies tells the same old hunter’s tale of American “exceptionalism” under siege. Much of this propaganda relies on racist stereotypes that criminalize communities of color, demonizes women of color and undermines their right to self-determination. On the other hand, culturally relevant humanism challenges traditional Western notions of what it means to be human. By building on the lived experiences, cultural knowledge, and social history of people of color it explicitly rejects colorblindness and myths of meritocracy. This talk will explore how culturally relevant approaches to humanism can inform feminist pedagogy and youth leadership.

There is a reception happening afterwards, where you will get a chance to meet not only Sikivu, but myself as well (if that’s a draw for you at all).

This event is sponsored by the BC Humanist Association, and more information about the event is available on their website.

Like this article? Follow me on Twitter!

19 No noose is good noose

September 26, 2012
by Crommunist
· black history · blog · forces of stupid · history · news · politics · privilege · race · racism

Hey folks! Remember that time that Clint Eastwood did something hilarious?

Clint Eastwood did end up stealing the show at Mitt Romney’s formal appointment as his party’s choice for the US presidential election but perhaps not in the way he or the candidate would have wanted.

The 82-year-old’s rambling gravel-voiced conversation with an empty chair – supposedly supporting an invisible Barack Obama – proved a bizarre and confusing warm-up act for Romney.

“Mr President, how do you handle promises that you have made when you were running for election, and how do you handle them? I mean, what do you say to people?” he asked. He berated Obama for not learning from the Russian experience in invading Afghanistan. It was George W Bush who ordered US troops into the country.

For your convenience, the word “hilarious” has been temporarily redefined to mean “sad and pathetically embarrassing”. Eastwood, in a fit of improvisational zeal, decided that it would be an effective strategy to bring out an empty chair to symbolize the President and then have a one-sided conversation with him/it in front of an international audience. Columnist Jamelle Bouie noted that the image of an old white man angrily lecturing an imaginary Obama was a perfect encapsulation of the entire Republican election process.

So that happened, and it was weird, and after a couple of weeks we all just kind of moved on from it. Well… almost all of us: … Continue Reading

“Misogynist” is NOT “the new nigger”

September 24, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · crapitalism · crommunism · feminism · forces of stupid · race · racism

Sometimes I read things on the internet that make me furious at how clueless and exploitative they are. Other times I read things on the internet that make me laugh myself sick at how unbelievably shallow and idiot they are. It is a rare occasion indeed when I have the opportunity to experience both reactions simultaneously, with a good deal of nausea thrown in the mix:

There were words the upper class used to keep those lower beings in line, and check those who’d forgotten their place. One of these words seemed more effective than the others.

Nigger.

That was what they were, after all. Niggers weren’t the same as human beings. They were legally and socially less than the privileged class. Niggers could be harmed and the police probably wouldn’t help them. Niggers were subject to vigilante justice.

(snip)

Misogynists aren’t the same as other human beings. You don’t have to listen to anything a misogynist says. They aren’t allowed the same rights as everyone else. Debate with the superiors? Pfft, what for? They are just a bunch of angry misogynists after all. Don’t talk to me because you hate women…Nigger. Their misogynistic posters got torn down? Serves the niggers right! Debate? No, they are dangerous nig- oops, I mean, misogynists.

I have a big selection of animated .gifs that I could use to characterize my response. There’s “disgusted black woman“. There’s “Ripley tearing into a room of idiots“, there’s even “angry panda“. Ultimately, after a long and arduous selection process, I think my reaction is best expressed by Tracey Morgan:

Tracey saying "no" in a variety of ways … Continue Reading

65 My application to BigThink

September 14, 2012
by Crommunist
· anti-racism · blog · crapitalism · critical thinking · forces of stupid · race · racism · science · skepticism

Some of you may remember the story of Satoshi Kanazawa, a “scientist” and “researcher” who made fame by raising some “tough questions” about the relationship between race, IQ, and health outcomes. He also pondered the evolutionary reasons why black women are just so damn unattractive (hint: it’s because they have so much testosterone – I’m not making that up). There was a predictable backlash against this brave scholar simply for asking “the tough questions”, and he was drummed out of academia, never to be heard from again.

But the career necromancers that are the BigThink editorial board have raised this errant genius from the depths of oblivion and have restored him to prominence on their group blog site:

Without a doubt, Satoshi Kanasawa is a willful, and highly effective, intellectual provocateur. In his scholarship, he has boldly overstepped traditional academic disciplinary bounds to posit interconnections and relationships between our evolutionary past and psychological present that address questions very few of his colleagues are even asking, let alone attempting to answer. In daring to ask these questions, Satoshi has made us think more than most.

His passion for endeavoring to think bigger and his deep-seeded contempt for the constraints of orthodoxy have informed a diverse body of scholarship that have turned a scientific light on an array of taboos, sacred assumptions and unquestioned — even unnoticed — realities. Like all heretics, Satoshi has become a lightning rod for criticisms across the spectrum which has only hardened his resolve to defy convention and expectation. In his public writing and blogging, he doesn’t posture or hedge to insulate himself from attack; on the contrary, he opts for the most extreme hypotheticals couched in the most sensitive, real-world contexts — he then stands firm and unflinching against the blowback.

Such a brave maverick! Not letting little things like “proper research design” or “understanding the topic” or “restricting your conclusions to the strength of the data” get in the way of preaching bold truths! Fuck your taboos of scientific rigour, squares! Satoshi is here to blow to roof off your narrow-minded “needing to do things correctly”! … Continue Reading

31 The price of speaking up

September 12, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · feminism · hate · news · race · racism

One of the cool things about North American culture’s increased multiculturalism (as a statistical fact, if not a political one) is that we begin to see an increasing permeability in roles that were once divided strictly along racial lines. The United States has a black president, which is a nifty thing in and of itself, but the Calgary Flames ice hockey team also has a black captain who will probably be inducted into the hall of fame – perhaps an equally remarkable accomplishment. Jackie Robinson is the most celebrated of race-barrier breaking athletes, but golf (a sport once almost synonymous with white folks) has a number of established and emerging stars who are people of colour (PoCs). And then there was that whole “Lin-sanity” thing.

Perhaps it is precisely because there is a much stronger incentive (particularly financial) to pick the best person for the job regardless of race, and perhaps it is because of how high-profile the field is, but sports seems to be one of those places where racial barriers can drop pretty quickly. Part of this must undoubtedly be a cohort effect that is a by-product of the selection process. For example, your family has to be able to afford to give you tennis or golf lessons when you’re a really young kid – this is often beyond the reach (and/or lies outside the reasonable life expectations) of many immigrant families, meaning that it probably takes a generation or two before you’ll see athletes of colour rise through the ranks. Even those merely economically disempowered domestic (i.e., non-immigrant or non-recent-immigrant) minority groups will have some generational lag time before they will be recognized as a youth prodigy and receive the requisite attention and coaching it takes to become a star.

But it is tempting, in the days of Tiger Woods and Lydia Ko, to forget that the racism in the background of even the brightest stars follows them, and will find any opportunity it can to take them down: … Continue Reading

27 Catching them being honest

September 5, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · conservativism · forces of stupid · hate · law · news · politics · privilege · racism

One of the pieces of political language that drives me absolutely nuts is the term ‘illegal immigrants’. The system of immigration in both Canada and the United States disincentivizes documented immigration by making it nearly impossible and subject to interference by the capricious whims of the party in power. Looking at it cynically, one could make the argument that there is a huge economic benefit to the elite class, who can exploit undocumented immigrants for what is essentially slave labour, secure in the knowledge that threats of deportation are usually enough to quell any resistance to the illegal working conditions. The system punishes the exploited, not the exploiters.

Of course, there are few places in the USA that are more openly and notoriously malevolent to undocumented immigrants than the state of Arizona. Despite the blatant racism inherent in their newly-minted anti-Mexican law that they try to pass off as a way of handling “illegals”, they are still legally allowed to detain and deport anyone who looks ‘foreign’ and can’t prove their non-foreign-ness to the satisfaction of the towering legal intellect of folks like Joe Arpaio.

And, apparently, this lady: … Continue Reading

6 One Million Bottlebags

September 4, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · First Nations · news · police · racism

The first album I ever bought was Public Enemy’s Apocalypse ’91: The Enemy Strikes Black. I don’t remember how old I was, but I couldn’t have been older than 8 or 9. This album is a classic and sparked a wave of ‘conscious’ political hip-hop that would be nearly drowned out by the explosion of the gangsta genre and the rise of the west coast some years later. At an age that young, I didn’t really understand most of what was being said – after all, I was growing up in the mountains of British Columbia. I’d never even seen a ‘hood, let alone understood the suffering of the people who lived there. It would, therefore, take me several years to understand the track “1 million bottlebags”:

Malt liquor bull
What it is, is bullshit
Colt 45 another gun to the brain
Who’s sellin’ us pain
In the hood another up to no good
Plan that’s designed by the other man

But who drink it like water
On an’ on, till the stores reorder it
Brothers cry broke but they still affordin’ it
Sippin’ it lick drink it down, oh, no
Drinkin’ poison but they don’t know

How could I connect, at that age, under those circumstances, to the helpless rage Churck D was trying to articulate at seeing his friends literally drink themselves to death? And in true Chuck style he pulled no punches in laying the blame (and the bodies) at the feet of predatory liquor companies who flooded black neighbourhoods with advertisements, targeting young black men with their substandard and unsafe product. Combine that with the widespread poverty and accompanying ambivalence toward the suffering of black people by the American government, and it’s no wonder that Chuck was so furious. Good thing those days are over, eh? … Continue Reading

15 White “flight”? Not exactly

August 30, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · race · racism · science

This morning we looked at a demographics paper by the Institute on Metropolitan Opportunity that looked at the phenomenon of suburban diversity, and found that while they tended to have tons of advantages over segregated communities (political balance, integrated schools, economic opportunity, increased cultural tolerance), they were also the least stable in terms of demographics. The data strongly suggested that while racially diverse communities were more likely to resegregate than segregated communities were to integrate, this was not a bidirectional phenomenon: it suggests that people of colour (PoCs) move in to white communities, while white people move out of integrated communities.

The relevant question is why is this happening? Is this truly an example of white people being horrible xenophobes who hate brown people? Is it simple in-group preference wherein people simply prefer to live with people who look like them and/or share a culture? Perhaps it’s a cohort effect whereby white people in suburbs have been there longer as a group, and have therefore had more time to accumulate wealth – wealth they use to afford to live in ‘nicer’ neighbourhoods that PoCs simply can’t afford yet?

Any self-respecting skeptic will likely recognize that it could be (and probably is) some combination of all of these things. The relative strength of each of these forces is going to vary widely due to factors geographic, historical, socioeconomic, academic – there’s a lot of moving parts to the equation. However, the authors point explicitly to a few mechanisms by which racial discrimination (systemic and otherwise) plays a major role in resegregating communities. Get ready to rage. … Continue Reading

19 The past is not passed

August 29, 2012
by Crommunist
· blog · Canada · hate · history · politics · racism

If you were reading the blog this past February, you are at least somewhat familiarwith Canada’s history of overt, ‘classical’ anti-black racism. Despite its avowed contemporary multiculturalism, Canada’s history is stained with the kind of racism that we only talk about in American History class (and even then, in hushed, clucking tones and sighs of relief about how much better things are now). Those who understand the historical arc of white supremacy and the instrumental role it played in both colonization and the rise of the European powers would probably not be surprised to see it survive through several generations of Canadian government. Even then, some of the details are still pretty shocking:

In 1885, John A. Macdonald told the House of Commons that, if the Chinese were not excluded from Canada, “the Aryan character of the future of British America should be destroyed …” This was the precise moment in the histories of Canada and the British Dominions when Macdonald personally introduced race as a defining legal principle of the state. He did this not just in any piece of legislation, but in the Electoral Franchise Act, an act that defined the federal polity of adult male property holders and that he called “my greatest achievement.” … Continue Reading

Page 7 of 28