(Cartoon by Sean Delonas for New York Post, Wednesday, February 18, 2009)
It is, to deliberately use the phrase, as simple as black and white.
When you refer to African-Americans as simians, you are being racist. When you refer to European-Americans in the same way, it's not.
For at least a thousand years, people from Africa were denied inclusion in the human family by the cultural, religious, and political institutions of Europe. Insisting Africans were "not entirely human" but some kind of ape-being was not the cause of racism. Racism, like all other oppressions, begins with power imbalance based on perceived survival struggle which eventually becomes widespread enough to infect every system of the human cultures where it is found. At that point, justifications and rationalizations are created to "explain" the lie. The portrayal of black people as monkeys is an ancient attempt to excuse treating them like animals.
Follow the power. If a man is compared to a barnyard animal, it may be offensive but it doesn't threaten the power flow because there is no institutionalized lie which implies it might be true. If a woman is compared to a barnyard animal, it is an attack backed by possible denial of access to power. Which is why I don't use bitch, chick, sow, or cow as terms for women, any more than I would use buck, junglebunny, rat, or vermin to refer to various non-white groups. There is, in my opinion, no "reclaiming" of such terminology while the power structure remains intact, no "subverting" the fact that we are all raised to think of the lie -- and the hate behind it -- first when we hear it used.
The association is there, whether we admit it or not. Even the depiction of two white police officers shooting a chimp (although, in this case, the drawing looks more like a gorilla, which I believe is deliberate because gorillas are more intimidating) would have an underlay of recognizable racism, because a solid percentage of the American population will think "black" when they see that ape. It's an easy, cheap association.
But when the line "They'll have to find someone else to write the next stimulus bill" is the caption -- with the clear knowledge that our President wrote the current stimulus bill, and in fact a photograph of him doing so appears on the previous page of the same newspaper in which this so-called cartoon appeared -- then there is no arguing the intent of this drawing. The intent is to encourage feelings and thoughts of homicide against our President because he is an African-American daring to break free of his "animal" category, daring to assume economic leadership. Over white people.
I recommend reading BAGNewsNotes, who of course has their finger directly on the pulse. Also recommended is Jack and Jill Politics analysis in "The Connection Between Blacks As Apes And Police Brutality".
I also encourage us to think long-term about what this blatant display means. Pam Spaulding at Pam's House Blend does a consummate job of listing all the racism employed by Republicans and the Right during this last election cycle in her post The New York Post Makes Its Case For a Post-Racial America. It's true that this is business as usual for that crowd. But is also true that as the delusion of their supposed majority is revealed, and as they lose access to power, they will not go gentle in that good night. Their racism is, as Orcinus and Sara Robinson have repeatedly warned, becoming a daily danger, beyond even the threat of violence and death at the hands of cops that every person of color in this country knows on a gut level.
We cannot "nice" and hope this away. We cannot educate infected individuals and leave the system intact. This is not an issue of semantics or artistic freedom. This is a clarion clear call to war. We do not (and I hope will not) accept their terms of battle, but we must pay attention: When a major newspaper in our largest city prints a cartoon advocating the murder of "whoever wrote the stimulus bill", reducing him to an ape out of control, we are facing cultural revolution.
Something's happening here...
[Cross-posted at Group News Blog.]
Thursday, February 19, 2009
SOMETHING'S HAPPENING HERE
Saturday, February 23, 2008
WHERE'S THE VEEP?
I realized today that what I really need to know about the two Democratic candidates is who they are going to choose as a running mate. That choice will tell me worlds, and will shove me solidly in one direction or the other. Theoretically, Hillary knows how to pick top-level staff for governing as opposed to campaigning -- Gore went on to win the election after Bill. One of the concerns I have about Barack is we don't know who he "runs" with, who will do the actual policy-making in his West Wing. Bill's Boys are who told him to go along with DOMA, dropped the ball with health care, and helped draft NAFTA. Who are Barack's troops? Is he insecure enough, like George Herbert, that he's going to pick a potatoe-brain for Veep so he looks even more Presidential in comparison? When will we find out?
My father was an intermittent Republican. He went from Goldwater in '60 and '64 to Nixon in '68 and '72 (splitting from my mother that year, who was ever after a Democrat), to venting his disillusionment over Watergate by voting for Carter instead of Ford. He was not a Reagan supporter, either, although it would have been hard for him to admit liking Reagan with me writing blazing broadsides from California and my mother's hatred of the man she referred to as "that B-movie actor". When Reagan won in 1980, I sent Mama an 8x12 black and white movie still from Bedtime for Bonzo. She had it framed and it sat on the endtable beside her throne, the easy chair, next to her Salem's and stash of Diet Dr. Peppers. Any new visitor to the house was directed to look at the picture of "that grinning subhuman -- and the chimp in his lap."
Daddy was seduced back to the GOP by the campaign of Bush the Elder. But he then voted for Clinton -- he liked Clinton, even though his favorite joke was "What do you get when you cross a draft-dodger with a lesbian? Chelsea" -- a little veiled woman-hating aimed my way. He had no use for Perot. He longed for a Dole presidency, either Bob or Liddy.
When Dubya ran for governor, Daddy was ambivalent about him. Daddy had worked in the oil industry all his life and was very familiar with company "directors" (especially West Texans) who lived off the profits others earned for them, self-serving creampuffs who were, as he put it, two Buds short of a six-pack. He remained ambivalent when Dubya started his Presidential campaign. (I can only imagine what Mama would have had to say about him -- like Molly Ivins, only much more profane.)
(And Mama would have loved Letterman's comment this week, regarding the resignation of Fidel Castro from office: "Experts predict that Fidel Castro will be succeeded either by his brother Raul or his idiot son Fidel W. Castro.")
Daddy's attitude toward Dubya changed dramatically, however, when Cheney was named as Vice President. Daddy had worked around Halliburton all his life. He knew them as crooks and manipulators, and anybody who'd been at their helm had no business in public office, he said. His disgust for Cheney turned to hatred when Cheney shot a fellow hunter in the face. Daddy was a gun collector and NRA member. He was outraged by the carelessness, the presence of alcohol, and the cover-up. He expected the NRA to issue a very public condemnation of the incident, and when they did not, he was extremely bitter.
I'm not bitter. I'd still rather have Bill in office, or Al, or Hillary, than anything which has ever leaned Republican. NONE of them are radical enough for me, bottom line. But having been asked to "trust me" once too often in the past, I'm more comfortable with the slicks I know than the slicks I don't. Tell me who your Veep is, and you get my vote.
(HTML stencil from Via
Kirk Watson was Mayor of Austin, Texas from 1997 to 2001. Currently he's a Texas State Senator for District 14, my district. He's a glib, pretty white boy trying hard to do the right thing. And he let himself get set up on MSNBC by not being able to say one damned thing about Barack's accomplishments, even as he declared himself an Obama supporter.
This is the problem, folks. This is the starry-eyed "hope" meme that makes so many of us nervous. But, I'm glad to say, it doesn't have to be that way.
Kirk himself has posted a "What I Should Have Said" apology at his website. Even better, Jack Turner at Jack and Jill Politics, a blog "that offers a Black Bourgeois perspective on American politics", has published a primer on Obama's accomplishments (and, very fairly, Hillary's) for those who can't reel them off yet, located at Obama's Experience: A Message for Supporters and Doubters. They provide excellent links, and compare not only Obama and Clinton against each other, but also against McCain. Study up, kids. As Jack says, "Know you ish."
(Vision Portal-Crocus by Lowry Bell)
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