Here's another one...pass it around!

Racism as Reflex: Reflections on Conservative Scapegoating
By Tim Wise
September 28, 2008

If hypocrisy were currency, conservatives would be able to single-handedly bail out the nation's free-falling financial system in less than a week, without the rest of us having to front so much as a penny.

So on the one hand, folks like this always tell others--especially the poor and people of color--to take "personal responsibility" for their lives, and not to blame outside factors (like racism, or the economic system) for their problems. But on the other hand, these same persons then demonstrate that their own ability to blame others for their personal setbacks, or the nation's problems, knows no rival.

So, for instance, if they or someone they know didn't get the job they wanted, it must be because of affirmative action or because the job was "taken" by an illegal immigrant; if their child didn't get into the college of his or her choice it must be because of some preference given to a black kid; if they can't afford to send their child to college it's because all the scholarship money was given to students of color; if their local schools are falling apart it's because of integration or multiculturalism; if their taxes are too high it's because of all those government programs for "those people." On and on it goes, with never so much as a nod to personal responsibility. Whatever goes wrong in the lives of white conservatives is almost always the fault of black and brown liberals, or so the story goes.

The right is so predictable when it comes to this kind of thing, that you can almost set your watch by their daily eruptions of stupidity.

And so in the past several weeks, we have been treated to three fresh examples of conservative scapegoating and buck-passing, in which they seek to blame the poor or folks of color for various social problems for which the latter are not the least bit responsible.

First, we have Neil Cavuto of Fox News, followed by Rush Limbaugh a few days later, along with smaller-market talk radio hosts and commentators, insisting that the nation's current financial mess is not the fault of greedy investors, free-wheeling bankers, speculators and other assorted rich people taking advantage of a largely deregulated market for bogus investments. Rather, it is the fault of poor people and those who seek to serve their communities, and especially folks of color, and those who insist on such things as civil rights.

How so? Simple: according to these blowhards, laws like the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which seeks to steer investments to economically marginalized communities so as to stimulate economic development and reverse the longstanding process of racial and economic redlining, is the real culprit. If banks hadn't been forced to throw good money after bad, and make loans to "minorities and risky folks" as Cavuto said on September 18th, none of this would have happened.

Of course, none of the reactionary cranks making this argument has seen fit to present even a single, solitary piece of statistical evidence to support their scapegoating of CRA. Evidence doesn't matter. Simply saying it, simply insisting that it's the black and the brown and the poor who are to blame is supposed to be enough. Sadly, for lots of Americans it will be. The kind of people who listen to the Limbaughs of the world, after all, rarely care much for facts. But for those who still put a premium on truth, and who place more value on honesty than their own need to nurture their anger, here are a few things to keep in mind.

First, the Community Reinvestment Act only applies to banks and thrifts that are federally-insured. This means that the independent mortgage brokers, who are responsible for half of all the nation's sub-prime lending--and who have been writing such loans at more than twice the rate of banks and thrifts--aren't even covered by the law. And make no mistake, it was the hand of the mortgage broker, more than any other, that precipitated the housing bubble. These are folks who were writing "stated income" loans (which means you don't have to prove your income, you can just tell them a number and get the OK), not caring about whether the borrower might default, since they were going to turn around and dump the loan at a profit, onto the secondary market, by pawning it off to investors who were gobbling up debt, betting on the further expansion of home values. In this scenario, neither the original broker nor the investor who bought up the debt was concerned about what would happen to the borrower who took out the initial loan. After all, if a borrower defaulted, but the housing market was still going up in value, they could swoop in, foreclose and sell the house again at a profit.

On neither end of this equation were poor people to blame. The persons getting stated income loans were overwhelmingly middle class, perhaps hoping to keep up with the richer folks down the block, but certainly not the poor. Most poor folks are still renters, or just hoping to get a modest home. And let it suffice to say that none of the vultures snapping up the mortgage debt on the secondary market were poor, and very few were persons of color. These were affluent white people, willing to gamble on the potential misfortune of others.

Secondly, the idea that loans to the poor or to moderate income folks could create this mess is almost inherently absurd. Fact is, the risk involved with loans to such persons is quite low. The amount of money lost, even when a low income family does default, is quite minimal. On the other hand, when a middle class family, striving to live above their means, takes out a note that eats up half of their income, the amount lost when the bubble bursts is quite a bit more substantial. This is one of the reasons that, according again to the evidence, loans to those with more moderate incomes are actually less risky than those to the affluent. Looking at CRA-related loans, for instance, the fact is, these represent nearly one-fourth of all loans written, but less than 10 percent of the high-cost, high-risk loans that precipitated the current crisis. These loans actually have lower default and foreclosure rates than non-CRA connected loans, and are twice as likely to be retained in the portfolios of the banks that originated them than other loans. In other words, it is not CRA loans being dumped into the hands of greedy speculators, and then falling flat, taking the economy with them.

Finally, to the extent low-income folks of color are shuttled into the sub-prime market, and then unable to pay their house notes, this unhappy fact owes more to discrimination than anti-discrimination efforts such as CRA. As several studies have shown, banks often reject borrowers of color, even when they have credit records similar to whites with the same incomes. Then, these rejected applicants are steered towards sub-prime lenders which charge far higher interest and place the borrowers in great jeopardy by driving up the amount they must repay.

A few years back, a study of Citigroup (which includes Citi, the group's sub-prime lender), found that Citi in North Carolina was charging higher interest even to borrowers who could have qualified for regular loans. In the process, over 90,000 mostly black borrowers were roped into predatory loans, and as a result paid an average of $327 more per month for mortgages than those getting loans from a prime lender. This added up to over $110,000 in excess payments over the life of the loans, on average. In other words, folks of color who could have qualified for lower-interest loans (that they would have been able to pay back far more easily) were steered to higher-cost instruments by greedy financial institutions, looking to make a quick buck at their expense. That's not the fault of civil rights protection, it's the fault of economic civil rights violations.

As if blaming the global financial squeeze on the poor wasn't putrid enough, along comes the National Review Online, which descended even deeper into the pit of obvious racism on September 26th. To wit, the blog entry entitled "Cause and Effect?" by Mark Krikorian, executive director of an anti-immigration group in DC, in which he notes failed S&L Washington Mutual's stellar record on corporate diversity, as if this were somehow connected to their insolvency. The fact that WaMu had been ranked as one of the top ten businesses in the Hispanic Business Diversity Elite, and had received a perfect score on the Human Rights Campaign's Corporate Equity Index (which focuses on equity for lesbian and gay folks), are, in Krikorian's mind, linked to their financial troubles. Because, ya know, if you have too many Latinos and gays working for you, well, clearly you can't care anything about the bottom line. That Krikorian presents no evidence, or even logic, to suggest a linkage between workplace equity and financial incompetence doesn't matter: his readers, predisposed to scapegoat the non-white and non-straight for anything and everything, can be expected to take the bait.

And then there's Louisiana state lawmaker, John LaBruzzo, who proposes solving the problem of poverty by giving financial incentives to poor women on public assistance to be sterilized, so as to cut down on their birthrates. LaBruzzo, whose legislative district was once represented by neo-nazi David Duke (who also proposed something like this in 1991), insists his plan isn't racist, sexist, or classist, but merely aimed at cutting down on excessive welfare costs. He also claims that his plan would reverse the current pattern, whereby poor women are encouraged to have more babies so as to collect more welfare.

Putting aside the inherently Hitlerian, eugenic rationale for such actions, LaBruzzo, as with Duke, and most right-wingers, ignores every bit of logic and evidence so as to push this kind of nonsense. First off, he ignores the now-twelve-year-old welfare reform law, which prevents additional payments for persons on welfare who have additional children. Although these "extra" monies were never very much (in Louisiana they amounted to less than $100 per month at the time the law was changed), now they are essentially non-existent. Secondly, LaBruzzo ignores the evidence from more than twenty years of research, which indicates that persons receiving public assistance do not, in fact, have more children, on average, than non-welfare receiving families. So the idea that poor women need incentives not to have babies is nonsense. What they need is decent-paying jobs, something LaBruzzo has no idea how to create.

And finally, the underlying premise of LaBruzzo's plan--which, if the public comments posted to Nola.com (New Orleans' main media website) are any indication, is quite popular--is entirely bogus. Contrary to conventional wisdom (or at least, contrary to what a lot of white people think, whether wise or not), the numbers of people even receiving cash welfare in Louisiana are ridiculously small. LaBruzzo, who said the idea for this bill came to him after seeing folks in New Orleans during Katrina who were dependent on so-called government handouts, apparently doesn't feel the need to do any homework. For had he done so, he would have discovered that at the time of the flooding, there were fewer than 5000 households in the entire city receiving cash assistance, out of nearly 200,000 households in all. Fewer than four percent of black households, and only about one in ten poor households were receiving the kind of welfare that LaBruzzo would seek to tie to sterilization. Since Katrina, the number of persons on state aid have fallen even further, as the poor muddle through with very little assistance of any kind. But rather than push for rental assistance for low-income folks, which would improve the lives of poor folks and their communities dramatically, LaBruzzo is content--as conservatives almost always are--to blame the poor for their condition and seek to change their behavior (or in this case, compel their infertility) so as to solve the problem of economic deprivation. How very typical.

So there you have it: white conservatives who simply cannot bring themselves to blame rich white people for anything, and who consistently fall back into old patterns, blaming the poor for poverty, black and brown folks for racism, anybody but themselves and those like them. That anyone takes them seriously anymore when they prattle on about "personal responsibility" is a stunning testament to how racism and classism continue to pay dividends in a nation whose soil has been fertilized with these twin poisons for generations. Unless the rest of us insist that the truth be told--and unless we tell it ourselves, by bombarding the folks who send us their hateful e-mails with our own correctives, thereby putting them on notice that we won't be silent (and that they cannot rely on our complicity any longer)--it is doubtful that much will change.

And here's another one...

Boxing Ourselves In: The Sad Irony of White Supremacy
By Tim Wise
September 21, 2008

I guess it would be amusing were it not so sad. After several days of combing through hateful diatribes, aimed at me because of previous commentaries I had written concerning racism and white privilege in the presidential campaign, it struck me: one of the most disturbing things about white racists is how they manage to confirm every stereotype about white folks that they would otherwise deny.

And so they write to me to say how I exaggerate the problem of white racism, and how they, of course, aren't racist at all, and then go on to tell me how they just don't like "the blacks," or "the Mexicans," or the "parasitic welfare cheats," whose race they never specify, but whose color in their minds is easy to guess, given the context of their remarks.

Or even better, they write to tell me that "racism isn't really a problem any more." The problem, they insist, is that "the blacks are just too damned lazy to get off their asses and work like the rest of us." Gee, glad to have that cleared up. I mean, if you can't see the irony embedded in that remark--after all, to deny that racism is a problem for black people, and then to cut loose with a racist generalization about those same people is the epitome of self-contradiction--then you're probably not prepared to enter a dialogue about much of anything.

I guess this is one of the aspects of racism that we don't think about often, but about which we should. Namely, it distorts the critical thinking skills of persons who may well be decent human beings, or at least capable of quite a bit better than what they show us in moments such as this. To hold such views as expressed above, and to then get angry at other whites when we reject those views, is to actually seek to limit white folks' humanity, by essentially insisting that all whites must see the world through the lens of white supremacy. That too is ironic: it means that white racists, by their demand for white unanimity, by their unwillingness to brook opposition to their sickness, are basically trying to force white people into a box in which our ability to define ourselves and to break out of the socially-constructed confines put upon us by racism is constrained. One would think that we would be offended by this; that perhaps we would begin to see white racism and its would-be enforcers as our enemies; that we would come to view race treason (if indeed, being white means going along with that kind of nonsense) as the highest calling of our people.

We rightly note how unfair it is when persons of color demand that other persons of color hew to a particular style or demeanor in order to be considered authentically black, for instance. When some suggested that Barack Obama wasn't really black, or at least not black enough, or when some within the black community, having internalized the strictures of white supremacist thinking, engage in intra-group harassment or invective against one another for being "too dark" or "too light," most everyone recognizes such things as unfortunate and regrettable examples of internalized racial oppression. But so too must we stand up to this notion, spread as it is by white racists, that to be white--authentically white--is to buy into anti-black and anti-brown stereotypes; that to be a strong white person is impossible unless we stand atop somebody else, as kings and queens of the proverbial hill.

How does this happen? And why do we allow it to happen? Why do we get angrier at people of color for pointing out white racism than we do at white folks for practicing it, and in so doing, perpetuating the notion that that's who we are--all of us? Do we not see that the reason we have so much anxiety about how someone might call us a racist if we say the wrong thing, is because we've been so silent in the face of white racism that folks of color logically come to wonder if we care, if we agree with the bigots in our midst, or if we're ever, ever going to stand up?

Don't get me wrong: I believe that all of us have internalized certain notions of white supremacy. It would be damned near impossible not to in a society that does such a marvelous job of teaching it. But we can also choose to turn on our teachers, those who have sought to condition us to go along, to remain silent, to accept the contours of American inequity and white privilege. That so few ever do so, not only implicates us in the suffering of those who are the targets of racism and white supremacy, but also implicates us in the negation of our own better selves. It is to say that we are OK with the box into which racism has placed us. It is to say that we don't mind having the confines of our humanity restricted in such a fashion. It is to say that we are not only in this skin, but even more, that we are *of* it: a terribly stultifying and depressing thought, which all but destroys the hope that one day we might evolve past such pathetic tribalism as this.

It is all the more disheartening because it doesn't have to be this way. And once upon a time it wasn't. There was a time, during the colonial period, when working class persons of European descent and those of African descent, seeing their common class interests, banded together to overthrow economic oppression, in places like the Virginia colony and elsewhere. Color meant very little to them, the notion of a unified "white race" didn't exist, and institutionalized white supremacy had yet to be fully actualized. But once the elite realized the dangers these growing cross-color coalitions posed to their power, they began to develop the divide and conquer tactics that are with us to this day. They ended indentured servitude for those who they began to label whites, they allowed them to own land, to testify in court, and to serve on slave patrols to keep blacks--those with whom they had previously seen a commonality of interests--in line.

It was a trick, of course, and it worked, and has continued to work for hundreds of years: working class white folks with nary a pot to piss in, ultimately contenting ourselves with what W.E.B. DuBois called the "psychological wage of whiteness," which is to say, the notion that we might not have much, but at least we're not black. When one has very little, one clings to what one has, and if the only real property one can claim is whiteness, then so be it, we'll do it, and have been doing it for generations. And of course those whose property is quite a bit more extensive than that are all too happy to watch the rest of us fight one another, over the pieces of a pie that we don't even own.

One would hope we had learned by now, after all these many years, that psychological wages--however comforting they may be in the moment--don't pay the mortgage or the rent, don't put our kids through school, and don't keep the lights on. They won't fill the pantry with food, nor take care of medical bills when we're sick. What they will do, is allow us to keep feeling ourselves superior, better, more entitled to the blessings of life, liberty, and happiness than our fellow human beings, even as we pursue political and social agendas that, in the end, put most all of us at risk. This we do in the name of whiteness. And this we do at the cost of our own integrity.

It would be amusing were it not so sad.

Here comes another one...pass it around!

tim

Explaining White Privilege
(Or, Your Defense Mechanism is Showing)
By Tim Wise
September 18, 2008

Sigh.

I guess I should have expected it, seeing as how it's nothing new. I write a piece on racism and white privilege (namely, the recently viral, "This is Your Nation on White Privilege"), lots of folks read it, many of them like it, and others e-mail me in fits of apoplexy, or post scathing critiques on message boards in which they invite me to die, to perform various sexual acts upon myself that I feel confident are impossible, or, best of all, to "go live in the ghetto," whereupon I will come to "truly appreciate the animals" for whom I have so much affection (the phrase they use for me and that affection, of course, sounds a bit different, and I'll leave it to your imagination to conjure the quip yourself).

Though I have no desire to debate the points made in the original piece, I would like to address some of the more glaring, and yet reasonable, misunderstandings that many seem to have about the subject of white privilege. That many white folks don't take well to the term is an understatement, and quite understandable. For those of us in the dominant group, the notion that we may receive certain advantages generally not received by others is a jarring, sometimes maddening concept. And if we don't understand what the term means, and what those who use it mean as they deploy it, our misunderstandings can generate anger and heat, where really, none is called for. So let me take this opportunity to explain what I mean by white privilege.

Of course, the original piece only mentioned examples of white privilege that were directly implicated in the current presidential campaign. It made no claims beyond that. Yet many who wrote to me took issue with the notion that there was such a thing, arguing, for instance that there are lots of poor white people who have no privilege, and many folks of color who are wealthy, who do. But what this argument misses is that race and class privilege are not the same thing.

Though we are used to thinking of privilege as a mere monetary issue, it is more than that. Yes, there are rich black and brown folks, but even they are subject to racial profiling and stereotyping (especially because those who encounter them often don't know they're rich and so view them as decidedly not), as well as bias in mortgage lending, and unequal treatment in schools. So, for instance, even the children of well-off black families are more likely to be suspended or expelled from school than the children of poor whites, and this is true despite the fact that there is no statistically significant difference in the rates of serious school rule infractions between white kids or black kids that could justify the disparity (according to fourteen different studies examined by Russ Skiba at Indiana University).

As for poor whites, though they certainly are suffering economically, this doesn't mean they lack racial privilege. I grew up in a very modest apartment, and economically was far from privileged. Yet I received better treatment in school (placement in advanced track classes even when I wasn't a good student), better treatment by law enforcement officers, and indeed more job opportunities because of connections I was able to take advantage of, that were pretty much unavailable to the folks of color I knew growing up. Likewise, low income whites everywhere are able to clean up, go to a job interview and be seen as just another white person, whereas a person of color, even who isn't low-income, has to wonder whether or not they might trip some negative stereotype about their group when they go for an interview or sit in the classroom answering questions from the teacher. Oh, and not to put too fine a point on it, but even low-income whites are more likely to own their own home than middle income black families, thanks to past advantages in housing and asset accumulation, which has allowed those whites to receive a small piece of property from their families.

The point is, privilege is as much a psychological matter as a material one. Whites have the luxury of not having to worry that our race is going to mark us negatively when looking for work, going to school, shopping, looking for a place to live, or driving for that matter: things that folks of color can't take for granted.

Let me share an analogy to make the point.

Taking things out of the racial context for a minute: imagine persons who are able bodied, as opposed to those with disabilities. If I were to say that able-bodied persons have certain advantages, certain privileges if you will, which disabled persons do not, who would argue the point? I imagine that no one would. It's too obvious, right? To be disabled is to face numerous obstacles. And although many persons with disabilities overcome those obstacles, this fact doesn't take away from the fact that they exist. Likewise, that persons with disabilities can and do overcome obstacles every day, doesn't deny that those of us who are able-bodied have an edge. We have one less thing to think and worry about as we enter a building, go to a workplace, or just try and navigate the contours of daily life. The fact that there are lots of able-bodied people who are poor, and some disabled folks who are rich, doesn't alter the general rule: on balance, it pays to be able-bodied.

That's all I'm saying about white privilege: on balance, it pays to be a member of the dominant racial group. It doesn't mean that a white person will get everything they want in life, or win every competition, but it does mean that there are general advantages that we receive.

So, for instance, studies have found that job applicants with white sounding names are 50% more likely to receive a call-back for a job interview than applicants with black-sounding names, even when all job-related qualifications and credentials are the same.

Other studies have found that white men with a criminal record are more likely to get a call-back for an interview than black male job applicants who don't have one, even when all requisite qualifications, demeanor and communication styles are the same.

Others have found that white women are far more likely than black women to be hired for work through temporary agencies, even when the black women have more experience and are more qualified.

Evidence from housing markets has found that there are about two million cases of race-based discrimination against people of color every year in the United States. That's not just bad for folks of color; the flipside is that there are, as a result, millions more places I can live as a white person.

Or consider criminal justice. Although data from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration indicates that whites are equally or more likely than blacks or Latinos to use drugs, it is people of color (blacks and Latinos mostly) who comprise about 90 percent of the persons incarcerated for a drug possession offense. Despite the fact that white men are more likely to be caught with drugs in our car (on those occasions when we are searched), black men remain about four times more likely than white men to be searched in the first place, according to Justice Department findings. That's privilege for the dominant group.

That's the point: privilege is the flipside of discrimination. If people of color face discrimination, in housing, employment and elsewhere, then the rest of us are receiving a de facto subsidy, a privilege, an advantage in those realms of daily life. There can be no down without an up, in other words.

None of this means that white folks don't face challenges. Of course we do, and some of them (based on class, gender, sexual orientation, disability status, or other factors) are systemic and institutionalized. But on balance, we can take for granted that we will receive a leg-up on those persons of color with whom we share a nation.

And no, affirmative action doesn't change any of this.

Despite white fears to the contrary, even with affirmative action in place (which, contrary to popular belief does not allow quotas or formal set-asides except in those rare cases where blatant discrimination has been proven) whites hold about ninety percent of all the management level jobs in this country, receive about ninety-four percent of government contract dollars, and hold ninety percent of tenured faculty positions on college campuses. And in spite of affirmative action programs, whites are more likely than members of any other racial group to be admitted to their college of first choice.* And according to a study released last year, for every student of color who received even the slightest consideration from an affirmative action program in college, there are two whites who failed to meet normal qualification requirements at the same school, but who got in anyway because of parental influence, alumni status or because other favors were done.

Furthermore, although white students often think that so-called minority scholarships are a substantial drain on financial aid resources that would otherwise be available to them, nothing could be further from the truth. According to a national study by the General Accounting Office, less than four percent of scholarship money in the U.S. is represented by awards that consider race as a factor at all, while only 0.25 percent (that's one quarter of one percent for the math challenged) of all undergrad scholarship dollars come from awards that are restricted to persons of color alone. What's more, the idea that large numbers of students of color receive the benefits of race-based scholarships is lunacy of the highest order. In truth, only 3.5 percent of college students of color receive any scholarship even partly based on race, suggesting that such programs remain a pathetically small piece of the financial aid picture in this country, irrespective of what a gaggle of reactionary white folks might believe.**

In other words, despite the notion that somehow we have attained an equal opportunity, or color-blind society, the fact is, we are far from an equitable nation. People of color continue to face obstacles based solely on color, and whites continue to reap benefits from the same. None of this makes whites bad people, and none of it means we should feel guilty or beat ourselves up. But it does mean we need to figure out how we're going to be accountable for our unearned advantages. One way is by fighting for a society in which those privileges will no longer exist, and in which we will be able to stand on our own two feet, without the artificial crutch of racial advantage to prop us up. We need to commit to fighting for racial equity and challenging injustice at every turn, not only because it harms others, but because it diminishes us as well (even as it pays dividends), and because it squanders the promise of fairness and equity to which we claim to adhere as Americans.

It's about responsibility, not guilt. And if one can't see the difference between those two things, there is little that this or any other article can probably do. Perhaps starting with a dictionary would be better.


*U.S Federal Glass Ceiling Commission, Good for Business: Making Full Use of the Nation's Human Capital. (Washington DC: Bureau of National Affairs, March 1995); Fred L. Pincus, Reverse Discrimination: Dismantling the Myth. (Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2003), 18; Roberta J. Hill, "Far More Than Frybread," in Race in the College Classroom: Pedagogy and Politics, ed. Bonnie TuSmith and Maureen T. Reddy. (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press), 169; Sylvia Hurtado and Christine Navia, "Reconciling College Access and the Affirmative Action Debate," in Affirmative Action's Testament of Hope, ed. Mildred Garcia (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997), 115.

**U.S. General Accounting Office, 1994. "Information on Minority Targeted Scholarships," B251634. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, January; Stephen L. Carter, "Color-Blind and Color-Active," 1992. The Recorder. January 3.

Pass it around...
________

Reflections on White Anti-Intellectualism
(Or, What'cha Want With all That Book Learnin'?)
By Tim Wise
September 14, 2008

To hear an awful lot of white folks tell it, the problem with black people is that they just don't want to work hard enough in school. They act up and refuse to study or get good grades, because they don't want to be put down for "acting white." In other words, the African American community is beset by a culture of anti-intellectualism, contrasted, one supposes with our own white culture of studiousness and academic achievement.

When making this argument, and knowing that it might sound a bit disparaging, even racist, we white folks love to refer to the high-profile black folks who agree with us. So we point to Bill Cosby, for instance, who said this same thing a few years ago and hasn't stopped saying it yet. The fact that a dozen or so studies have found that there actually is no unique peer pressure or ostracism that black kids experience for doing well in school (over and above that which all kids who are viewed as brainy often face) fails to move them. The fact that longitudinal data actually shows that black students are the most likely to believe in the importance of getting a good education, the least likely to cheat and the least likely to skip class appears to matter not.

But what I have always found interesting about the anti-intellectualism charge coming from whites and pointed at persons in the black community, is how readily it emanates from a group of people (white adults) who seem to actually revel in anti-intellectualism, as evidenced by our voting behavior and political sensibilities, made especially clear during the current political campaign.

What else but a deep contempt for education (or book learnin' as we sometimes jokingly refer to it in the South) could explain why Barack Obama's Harvard Law School education can be mocked as elitist and out of touch, while John McCain's bottom-feeder academic record and Sarah Palin's four colleges in six years and degree from the University of Idaho, makes them ready to lead, and more like "normal people?" (And please, don't tell me how it isn't his education that poses the problem, but rather his comments about rural folks clinging to God and guns when times are tight, since a week after he made that comment, Dick Cheney implied that West Virginians were all a bunch of inbreds, and rural whites didn't seem to care, since at least he isn't an uppity black guy).

What else but a deep contempt for education could render Obama's time as a law professor, teaching constitutional law at one of the nation's finest law schools, all but irrelevant in the eyes of millions? To hear a lot of people tell it, his time in the classroom doesn't count, and doesn't indicate anything about his fitness to be president (even though, ya know, being an expert on the Constitution is intuitively a good thing for the president to be, or one would think), but having been a prisoner of war, or a hunter and hockey mom, and "just like the neighbor next door," makes you fit for the nation's highest offices.

What else but a deep contempt for education could explain the free pass given to George W. Bush for bragging at a Yale commencement a few years ago that he had been a C student, but that was OK, because even with a mediocre academic record you could go on to be president? If a black person told students that, they'd be viewed as downgrading achievement, but not Bush. Is it the accent? Is that all it takes to make people think you're one of them? A bubba drawl and the spinning of downhome homilies? Or the fact that you like to shoot guns? If this is the love for learning, and the intelligence that white folks seem to think blacks inadequately value, can I suggest that perhaps such intelligence isn't all it's cracked up to be?

What else but a deep-seated anti-intellectual streak could explain why so many white voters in 2000 and 2004 regularly mentioned how they preferred Bush because he was the "kind of guy you feel you could have a beer with" (as if that had anything to do with being the leader of the so-called free world), and how they disdained the intellectual certitude of Gore and Kerry, whose command of policy details made them feel like they were being talked down to?

What else but a commitment to the long-term abdication of critical thinking could explain why millions of whites take so quickly to Rush Limbaugh: a guy whose motto for years was that he would "tell you what to think" and whose fans call themselves "ditto" heads (as in, "same as above," which is nearly the perfect metaphor for people who follow someone else like sheep).

In fact, the white love of anti-intellectualism in politics goes back quite a ways further than that. So when Ronald Reagan decided to skip out on a policy briefing during an important overseas trip, all so he could watch The Sound of Music on television, or when he regularly failed to know the names of foreign leaders, most white folks still loved him and considered him a great leader. Perhaps it was because he had a ranch, liked to wear cowboy hats, and had that folksy aw-shucks grin?

As a white person, and as one with plenty of antiracist and critical-thinking white friends, I realize that not all whites fall into this anti-intellectual trap. Perhaps most don't. But it appears that enough do to make a difference in elections. And surely, the embrace of anti-intellectualism is at least as severe in the white community as it is in the black community, where we constantly hear talk of it, coming from the very white folks who then turn around and tell us that the Earth was created only 5000 years ago, and that despite having no scientific training, they are sure that global warming is a myth, but that Obama really is a Muslim, or maybe the anti-Christ (as once-upon-a-time celebrity, Victoria Jackson claims on her website).

In short, when it comes to "acting white," if the term means paying no attention to policy details, but rather voting for the person who you'd most like to hang out with at a sports bar, then perhaps we need not only black and brown folks to forswear such lunacy, but for those of us who are white to turn on whiteness too. To not do so would be to confirm that whiteness is inversely related to mental acumen. I for one, would like to think we were capable of better. But as for evidence to support my hope? Well, I'm still waiting for that.

(NOTE: I added some things to this piece, and made a few changes to other parts for accuracy and clarity. So, if you are going to send the piece around to more people m please send this version if possible)

This is Your Nation on White Privilege
By Tim Wise
9/13/08

For those who still can't grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "fuckin' redneck," like Bristol Palin's boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their fuckin' ass," and talk about how you like to "shoot shit" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don't all piss on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you're "untested."

White privilege is being able to say that you support the words "under God" in the pledge of allegiance because "if it was good enough for the founding fathers, it's good enough for me," and not be immediately disqualified from holding office--since, after all, the pledge was written in the late 1800s and the "under God" part wasn't added until the 1950s--while believing that reading accused criminals and terrorists their rights (because, ya know, the Constitution, which you used to teach at a prestigious law school requires it), is a dangerous and silly idea only supported by mushy liberals.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto is "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she's being disrespectful.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you're being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college and the fact that she lives close to Russia--you're somehow being mean, or even sexist.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don't even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because suddenly your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn't support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

White privilege is when you can take nearly twenty-four hours to get to a hospital after beginning to leak amniotic fluid, and still be viewed as a great mom whose commitment to her children is unquestionable, and whose "next door neighbor" qualities make her ready to be VP, while if you're a black candidate for president and you let your children be interviewed for a few seconds on TV, you're irresponsibly exploiting them.

White privilege is being able to give a 36 minute speech in which you talk about lipstick and make fun of your opponent, while laying out no substantive policy positions on any issue at all, and still manage to be considered a legitimate candidate, while a black person who gives an hour speech the week before, in which he lays out specific policy proposals on several issues, is still criticized for being too vague about what he would do if elected.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God's punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you're just a good church-going Christian, but if you're black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you're an extremist who probably hates America.

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O'Reilly means you're dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

White privilege is being able to go to a prestigious prep school, then to Yale and then Harvard Business school, and yet, still be seen as just an average guy (George W. Bush) while being black, going to a prestigious prep school, then Occidental College, then Columbia, and then to Harvard Law, makes you "uppity," and a snob who probably looks down on regular folks.

White privilege is being able to graduate near the bottom of your college class (McCain), or graduate with a C average from Yale (W.) and that's OK, and you're cut out to be president, but if you're black and you graduate near the top of your class from Harvard Law, you can't be trusted to make good decisions in office.

White privilege is being able to dump your first wife after she's disfigured in a car crash so you can take up with a multi-millionaire beauty queen (who you go on to call the c-word in public) and still be thought of as a man of strong family values, while if you're black and married for nearly twenty years to the same woman, your family is viewed as un-American and your gestures of affection for each other are called "terrorist fist bumps."

White privilege is being able to sing a song about bombing Iran and still be viewed as a sober and rational statesman, with the maturity to be president, while being black and suggesting that the U.S. should speak with other nations, even when we have disagreements with them, makes you "dangerously naive and immature."

White privilege is being able to claim your experience as a POW has anything at all to do with your fitness for president, while being black and experiencing racism and an absent father is apparently among the "lesser adversities" faced by other politicians, as Sarah Palin explained in her convention speech.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren't sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it's just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.

White privilege is, in short, the problem.

Just a note to make sure everyone knows about my upcoming book releases/projects:

In August, Soft Skull will release a collection of my previously published essays, from 2000-2008, entitled Speaking Treason Fluently: Anti-Racist Reflections from an Angry White Male. Even though you may have read many or most of these pieces before, they've been tweaked, improved, with some data updated in certain cases, etc....so make sure to pick one up if you can! About 42 pieces in all--sort of a "best of" or "Tim Wise Reader," only I haven't quite crossed over to the level of narcissism that would allow me to actually title a book that way!

Then, City Lights has just agreed to publish (provided I can get it written!) a long-form essay as a book for Spring 2009. It is tentatively titled: "Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and Whiteness in the Age of Obama," and will address what Obama's political ascent means (and doesn't mean) for the state of racism, white folks' racial attitudes, and white privilege in the U.S.

Then, I am going to be teaming up with Greg Blackburn, who is the head of school at a New York City Montessori elementary, to write a book for children, dealing with white anti-racist allies in history, and how they stood with folks of color to fight injustice. There is nothing like this out there for kids (of which I am aware at least), and we both think it would be helpful for white kids in particular, to see persons like themselves "doing the right thing," and serving as role models.

If you have any ideas for this book, in terms of people's stories that might be good to tell (from any time period) let me know! I've got some ideas but could always use more!

Also, one last thing: I've been forgetting to do this...

I am now on redroom. com, which is a website for authors, where we highlight our writing, speeches, videos, etc. It's a great site, so check it out, not just for my stuff, but because there are some amazing writers there in all kinds of genres.

Ok, thanks!

Tim Wise

Ok y'all...here it is: a comprehensive critique of all the B.S. emails going around drawing mean-spirited and racist comparisons between flood victims in the Midwest this week, and those in New Orleans, post-Katrina. If you haven't gotten one of these yet, you will, so be prepared and send this around to everyone you know. Limbaugh said the same crap on air the other day and millions are ingesting that poison, so let's fight stupidity with facts...

tim

(oh, btw, since links aren't working for me on MySpace, you can go to my main website and find this piece in an hour or so, with reference URLs at the bottom, for the various data claims herein)

The Ugly Side of Disaster:
Racism and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering
By Tim Wise
June 18, 2008

Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.

On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation's people are with those in need.

And then there's Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

This week, as Iowans and some in Illinois watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people, who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality, and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Thus, we have his statement of a few days ago, in which he noted that in the midst of the devastation in the Midwest:

"I see people working together. I see people trying to save their property...I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters. I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street...I see the heartland of America. When I look at Iowa and when I look at Illinois, I see the backbone of America."

Sadly it isn't only Limbaugh who has been making these kinds of comparisons. Millions of us have also been subjected to the e-blast missives making the rounds, which seek to contrast the law-abiding, God-fearing, and let us not forget mostly white farming folks of the Midwest to the black, urban, and congenitally defective folks of the Big Easy. If you haven't received something like this from a friend, relative or co-worker yet, just wait, you probably will soon.

But what all of these like-minded rants indicate--whether spewed to 20 million pliant sheep via the airwaves, or posted on a pathetic little blog read by no one--is the dishonesty of those offering them up. Either that, or the fundamental ineptitude of the same when it comes to doing basic research, fact-checking, or merely paying attention to the fundamental differences between the flooding of New Orleans and that of rural and small town Iowa communities.

Among the differences that should be readily apparent to almost anyone, consider:

In New Orleans, residents were kept from escaping, literally forced back into the city by armed police from a neighboring community. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, relief agencies like the Red Cross were prohibited from entering the city, thanks to an order from the Department of Homeland Security, which feared that the provision of relief would delay evacuation. In other words, the suffering was heightened deliberately by government order, as noted on the Red Cross website, as early as September 2, 2005. Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, those stuck in the flood zone (tens of thousands in all) were herded into the Superdome and Convention Center, where there was no air conditioning (at the hottest time of the year in that city), no food, and little or no water. When those who were trapped (and who would wait for three full days before any serious assistance arrived) tried to get to the food in the pantries of the Convention Center (food that would have gone bad or been written off anyway), they were met by guns, pointed at them by members of the National Guard, who warned them to "step away from the food or we'll blow your fucking heads off." Nothing like this has happened in Iowa.

In New Orleans, there are very few escape routes out of the city, as anyone who has spent much time there can attest. The only artery capable of handling a significant number of vehicles is Interstate 10, heading west or east. In the Midwestern flood zones, there are far more escape routes, far fewer people to get evacuated, and the flooding was a slow and steady process, unlike the rapid inundation in New Orleans, which happened quickly after the overtopping of inadequately constructed levees.

In New Orleans, according to data in the 2004 and 2006 American Community Surveys, conducted by the Census Bureau, residents were about four times as likely as their Iowa counterparts not to have access to a vehicle that could facilitate their escape from the flood zone. Whereas more than 21 percent of New Orleanians were without access to a car at the time of Katrina, only 6 percent of folks in Black Hawk County (home to hard-hit Cedar Falls, Iowa) and 5 percent of those in Linn County (home to flooded Cedar Rapids-the biggest city affected by the latest deluge) were carless. To put the importance of not having a vehicle in stark terms, 38,000 households in New Orleans, comprising approximately 100,000 people, were without a car, and thus, unable to flee on their own.

But perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the Limbaugh and like-minded screeds has been the speed with which they have descended into the barrel of racist myth in order to bash the people of New Orleans once again, much as they were doing in August and September of 2005. To wit the repeated references to looting, rapes, murder, shooting at helicopters and other assorted mayhem by New Orleans' black folks, nearly all of which have been discredited as utterly false, almost from the time they were first concocted.

So consider Limbaugh's formulation, where he says, "I don't see a bunch of people running around waving guns at helicopters, I don't see a bunch of people running shooting cops. I don't see a bunch of people raping people on the street."

Fair enough. Those things aren't happening in Iowa. Yet, according to multiple post-Katrina investigations, and stories written up by the Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times, the New Orleans Times Picayune, the London Guardian, the New York Times, Popular Mechanics, Reason Magazine and the American Journalism Review, reports of shooting at helicopters or rapes or murders were almost entirely false. There were, in fact, no murders in the evacuation centers, few if any sexual assaults, no helicopters fired on, and no police officers shot by residents. Yes, there was looting, although by a distinct minority of persons trapped in the city, and overwhelmingly for necessities like food, medicine, water, and clothing to replace the rotting, soaked rags people were wearing after wading through waist-deep water. And according to persons on the ground in the flood zone, even the luxury items taken were typically used as barter chips, to get rides out of the city for oneself and one's family when it became obvious that large scale assistance wasn't going to arrive any time soon. In other words, reports of widespread thuggery in New Orleans during the flooding have been greatly exaggerated, if not entirely fabricated, and have only remained believable to millions because of the race and class biases which allow people to believe the worst about poor black folks even without a shred of actual evidence.

And while Limbaugh and others praise Midwesterners for pulling together in a spirit of cooperation--as opposed to the animalistic chaos we are to envision when thinking of New Orleanians during Katrina--the fact is there were innumerable acts of kindness in the streets of New Orleans as well. Those who personally brought supplies to the thousands trapped downtown reported little if any fighting or anger amongst the assembled; rather, they saw persons trying to shade the elderly, and make sure that old folks and the very young had first dibs on what little relief supplies were dribbling in. But the media focused on none of that, choosing instead to highlight reports--false as it turned out--of mass violence.

Then of course have been the suggestions, especially common in the e-blasts and blog postings to the effect that Iowans, unlike New Orleanians, have helped themselves, because while the latter had grown dependent on government to solve their problems, Midwesterners in the "heart of America" still value the importance of self-reliance. But the fact is, Iowans are no less likely to receive government assistance than those in New Orleans were prior to Hurricane Katrina, according to the Census Bureau's American Community Surveys, taken in 2006 (the most recent year available) and 2004 (the last data collected for New Orleans before the flooding of that city).

In hard-hit Linn County, Iowa, 2400 households receive cash public assistance, out of 85,000 total households, meaning that 2.8 percent of all households in the County receive cash welfare. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, and contrary to popular belief, only 2.6 percent of households received cash welfare (4600 households out of 180,000). So in truth, a slightly higher percentage of Linn Countians were on the dole than New Orleanians! In Black Hawk County (also hard hit by the recent deluge), 2.5 percent of all households receive cash assistance: again, suggesting no real difference between the mostly white and rural folks there, and the mostly black and urban folks in Orleans Parish at the time of Katrina.

And it should be noted, the average amount of welfare received in the Iowa counties was higher than that for recipients in New Orleans. So whereas the average annual amount of cash assistance received in New Orleans prior to Katrina was only $2800, in Linn County it's $3200 and in Black Hawk County, the average amount received is over $4600. Bottom line: those supposedly harder-working, more self-reliant white folks in the heartland are just as likely to receive public assistance as black folks in New Orleans, and when they do, they actually get more than the latter in raw dollar terms.

As with cash, food stamp participation is roughly the same in the hard hit Iowa counties as in New Orleans before Katrina. In 2004, about 11 percent of New Orleans households received food stamps, as did 8 percent of Linn County households and 10 percent of Black Hawk County households in 2006.

In addition to traditional government assistance, let it also be remembered that Iowans are quite dependent on another form of public handout: agricultural subsidies. Indeed, Iowa--that place of hard working, self-reliant folks who are now being contrasted with the supposedly government-dependent laggards in New Orleans--receives the second highest amount of agricultural crop subsidies of any state in the country, according to data compiled by the Environmental Working Group. From 1995-2006, Iowa farmers raked in $16 billion in subsidies, with 7 in 10 farmers in the state receiving some form of subsidy from the federal government. Even those small family farmers at the bottom of the subsidy pile, who receive far less than the large corporate giants who take a disproportionate amount of the loot, still received a little more than $2000 per household: not much less than the amount received in cash welfare by those in New Orleans, prior to Katrina, who received such assistance.

To put the amounts received from government in perspective, in Black Hawk County, farmers get about $15 million in crop subsidies, while in Linn County the annual take is about $17 million. In New Orleans, prior to Katrina, residents there were receiving about $13 million per year in cash assistance under the program for dependent children and their mothers. So putting aside the cash welfare received by Iowans, which as noted above was actually more, per household, than that received by New Orleanians, crop subsidies indicate that Iowans were and are more government dependent than the residents of New Orleans, no matter what the racist and classist perceptions of the general public may be.

And so here we are: a nation potentially on the precipice of electing a man of color as president, being told by media pundits and others that this fact demonstrates above all else how Americans have "transcended race," and put aside the old animosities and bigotries of the past. Yet, at the first opportunity, we see right-wing windbags striving to perpetuate the stereotypes, the false urban legends, and the deceptive rhetoric of racism to score points with their readers and listeners. And if the speed with which such venal propaganda is making its way around the web is any indication, the smear campaign seems to be working.

Just one more piece of evidence that this nation has transcended nothing when it comes to race and racism. Just one more clear indication that the success of Barack Obama says little in terms of what millions of white folks still believe about the majority of black folks with whom we share a nation. So long as entire communities can be pathologized in the minds of the masses, thanks to the efforts of unresearched gasbags like Rush, the ability of individuals of color to rise to positions of authority will say virtually nothing about the larger illness of racism and its continued salience.

Only when white folks stand up to the Limbaughs of the world--only when we see challenging white racism as our burden, our responsibility, and as a fundamental part of what we need to do in the realm of that vaunted "self-help" we're always preaching to others--will things likely change. We've been silent too long, and our silence implicates us, just as much as Rush's bombast indicts him, in the spread of this sickness known as racism. It is well past time to leave collaboration behind.

Here is my latest essay, "Your Whiteness is Showing: An Open Letter to Certain White Women who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November." I think you can ascertain the content from the title. Since MySpace scrambles links, I won't post it here.

You can find it though at my website, which is timwise(dot)org

Here is the text:

Your Whiteness is Showing:
An Open Letter to Certain White Women who are Threatening to Withhold Support From Barack Obama in November

By Tim Wise

June 6, 2008

This is an open letter to those white women who, despite their proclamations of progressivism, and supposedly because of their commitment to feminism, are threatening to withhold support from Barack Obama in November. You know who you are.

I know that it's probably a bad time for this. Your disappointment at the electoral defeat of Senator Hillary Clinton is fresh, the sting is new, and the anger that animates many of you--who rightly point out that the media was often sexist in its treatment of the Senator--is raw, pure and justified.

That said, and despite the awkward timing, I need to ask you a few questions, and I hope you will take them in the spirit of solidarity with which they are genuinely intended. But before the questions, a statement if you don't mind, or indeed, even if (as I suspect), you will mind it quite a bit.

First, for those of you threatening to actually vote for John McCain and to oppose Senator Obama, or to stay home in November and thereby increase the likelihood of McCain winning and Obama losing (despite the fact that the latter's policy platform is virtually identical to Clinton's while the former's clearly is not), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and increase the odds of his winning (despite the fact that he once called his wife the c-word in public and is a staunch opponent of reproductive freedom and gender equity initiatives, such as comparable worth legislation), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

For those threatening to vote for John McCain or to stay home and help ensure Barack Obama's defeat, as a way to protest what you call Obama's sexism (examples of which you seem to have difficulty coming up with), all the while claiming to be standing up for women...

Your whiteness is showing.

When I say your whiteness is showing this is what I mean: You claim that your opposition to Obama is an act of gender solidarity, in that women (and their male allies) need to stand up for women in the face of the sexist mistreatment of Clinton by the press. On this latter point--the one about the importance of standing up to the media for its often venal misogyny--you couldn't be more correct. As the father of two young girls who will have to contend with the poison of patriarchy all their lives, or at least until such time as that system of oppression is eradicated, I will be the first to join the boycott of, or demonstration on, whatever media outlet you choose to make that point. But on the first part of the above equation--the part where you insist voting against Obama is about gender solidarity--you are, for lack of a better way to put it, completely full of crap. And what's worse is that at some level I suspect you know it. Voting against Senator Obama is not about gender solidarity. It is an act of white racial bonding, and it is grotesque.

If it were gender solidarity you sought, you would by definition join with your black and brown sisters come November, and do what you know good and well they are going to do, in overwhelming numbers, which is vote for Barack Obama. But no. You are threatening to vote not like other women--you know, the ones who aren't white like you and most of your friends--but rather, like white men! Needless to say it is high irony, bordering on the outright farcical, to believe that electorally bonding with white men, so as to elect McCain, is a rational strategy for promoting feminism and challenging patriarchy. You are not thinking and acting as women, but as white people.

So here's the first question: What the hell is that about?

And you wonder why women of color have, for so long, thought (by and large) that white so-called feminists were phony as hell? Sister please...

Your threats are not about standing up for women. They are only about standing up for the feelings of white women, and more to the point, the aspirations of one white woman. So don't kid yourself. If you wanted to make a statement about the importance of supporting a woman, you wouldn't need to vote for John McCain, or stay home, thereby producing the same likely result--a defeat for Obama. You could always have said you were going to go out and vote for Cynthia McKinney. After all, she is a woman, running with the Green Party, and she's progressive, and she's a feminist. But that isn't your threat is it? No. You're not threatening to vote for the woman, or even the feminist woman. Rather, you are threatening to vote for the white man, and to reject not only the black man who you feel stole Clinton's birthright, but even the black woman in the race. And I wonder why? Could it be...?

See, I told you your whiteness was showing.

And now for a third question, and this is the biggie, so please take your time with it: How is it that you have managed to hold your nose all these years, just like a lot of us on the left, and vote for Democrats who we knew were horribly inadequate--Kerry, Gore, Clinton, Dukakis, right on down the uninspiring line--and yet, apparently can't bring yourself to vote for Barack Obama? A man who, for all of his shortcomings (and there are several, as with all candidates put up by either of the two major corporate parties) is surely more progressive than any of those just mentioned. And how are we to understand that refusal--this sudden line in the proverbial sand--other than as a racist slap at a black man? You will vote for white men year after year after year--and are threatening to vote for another one just to make a point--but can't bring yourself to vote for a black man, whose political views come much closer to your own, in all likelihood, than do the views of any of the white men you've supported before.

How, other than as an act of racism, or perhaps as evidence of political insanity, is one to interpret such a thing?

See, black folks would have sucked it up, like they've had to do forever, and voted for Clinton had it come down to that. Indeed, they were on board the Hillary train early on, convinced that Obama had no chance to win and hoping for change, any change, from the reactionary agenda that has been so prevalent for so long in this culture. They would have supported the white woman--hell, for many black folks, before Obama showed his mettle they were downright excited to do so--but you won't support the black man.

And yet you have the audacity to insist that it is you who are the most loyal constituency of the Democratic Party, and the one before whom Party leaders should bow down, and whose feet must be kissed?

Your whiteness is showing.

Look, I couldn't care less about the Party personally. I left the Democrats twenty years ago when they told me that my activism in the Central America solidarity and South African anti-apartheid movements made me a security risk, and that I wouldn't be able to get clearance to be in some parade with Governor Dukakis. Yeah, seriously. But for you to act as though you are the indispensible voters, the most important, the ones whose views should be pandered to, whose every whim should be the basis for Party policy, is not only absurd, it is also racist in that it, a) ignores and treats as irrelevant the much more loyal constituency of black folks, without whom no Democrat would have won anything in the past twenty years (and indeed the racial gap favoring the Democrats among blacks is about six times larger than the gender gap favoring them among white women, relative to white men); and b) demonstrates the mentality of entitlement and superiority that has been long ingrained in us as white folks--so that we believe we have the right to dictate the terms of political engagement, and to determine the outcome, and to get our way, simply because for so long we have done just that.

But that day is done, whether you like it or not, and you are now left with two, and only two choices, so consider them carefully: the first is to stand now in solidarity with your black brothers and sisters and welcome the new day, and help to push it in a truly progressive and feminist and antiracist direction, while the second is to team up with white men to try and block the new day from dawning. Feel free to choose the latter. But if you do, please don't insult your own intelligence, or ours, by insisting that you've done so as a radical political act.

Ok, so I am now moving into the world of merchandise (DVDs and CDs of speeches). As of today, you can get a high-quality DVD of my October, 2007 speech at Mt. Holyoke ("Racism, White Denial and the Costs of Inequality"), and a similarly high-quality CD of my April 4th speech in Oakland, CA ("The Audacity of Truth: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama"). They can be purchased from me directly in the case of the DVD, and from Speak Out Speakers and Artists, for the CD. Actually, Speak Out is handling the payment processing for both, but I will ship the DVD myself. You can get them at the following links (you'll need to copy the links to your browser bar).

DVD:
http://speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=52&uid=2979

CD:
http://speakoutnow.org/userdata_display.php?modin=52&uid=2949

Thanks!

Tim

Please, please please send this one to everyone you know: it is my latest essay, in which I address the furor over the comments made by the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Barack Obama’s pastor. Obama may have to distance himself from the fundamental truths spoken by Wright, but for the rest of us this is the opportunity to demand that white people confront the nation’s history. White folks’ reactions, by and large, to this story, suggest that so far, we still prefer the cocoon of denial

http://www.lipmagazine.org/~timwise/NationalLies.html

Thanks

tim