LUMPENPROLETARIAT—Medium is another one of these new “authentic” blogger aggregating websites sprouting up everywhere, like Substack, and I guess old school websites, like this one—Wordpress—which provide easy platforms for bloggers to use. But whereas websites, like WordPress (being among the first), have been pretty utilitarian or basic, Medium and Substack are glossier and offer paths to monetization for bloggers, who can build a following. And these newer platforms seem more willing to stroke blogger egos and build up user personality profiles to entice volunteer writers. So, they’ll have some celebrity bloggers in there and be like, Oh, look, you could be the next so and so. Glenn Greenwald famously moved to Substack recently, after essentially being forced out of The Intercept, which he co-founded… But that’s another story. [1] I guess it’s cool that such websites are looking for “authentic” voices and whatnot. Time will tell…

The main point I wanted to emphasize here was simply the fact that I had encountered an Op-Ed type essay where a black person was calling out brown people for being racist.[2] As someone called brown, at least in the summertime, I do believe this is a first for me, personally. In virtually everything I’ve ever read in print about race and racism and whatnot, it has been either white vs black or white vs brown, even brown vs brown, but never black vs brown. I suppose Richard Rodriguez is one exception, which comes to mind, among other more obscure examples, perhaps. Maybe this is a good sign of greater diversity in the blogosphere.

I don’t have a whole lot of history watching Spanish-language networks, Telemundo or Univision, except when visiting family. But I do know they are quite vocal about the racism of the Republican Party, historically, and more recently the Trump admin’s racism against immigrants and brown people. But it seems those brown/latinx networks largely ignore the plight of blacks in their news reporting. Similarly, the usual American discourse has historically been a dialectical back and forth between white people and black people. So, it’s nice for brown people to be included in a group discussion for a change, even if it is just to be called out for being racist.

cf., https://medium.com/marleyisms/white-people-love-racism-more-than-they-love-humanity-f78aa0a00aca?s=09

It’s not that Black people didn’t know how racist a lot of White, Black, and Brown people were, but it’s nice to have my Black experiences finally validated. America is racist as fuck, and White people can’t deny it anymore.

Ouch.  She called out “Brown people”, as racist.  Dang.  It only hurts because it’s true; and it hits close to home.  Have I done enough to call out the racism in my brown raza, especially among my own family and friends?  Clearly, we haven’t done enough.  I mean those crazy Cubans in Florida are always going to be conservatives with a bloodlust for Cuba. But how do we explain the other conservative Latinos, voting against the collective wellbeing of all people of color, not just harming other Latinx?

As a brown person, it hurts me to read that being said by a black person about brown people. I grew up looking up to black freedom fighters since before I wrote a book report on Frederick Douglass in the fourth grade for Mrs. Bullock’s class at Sunnybrae Elementary School in my hometown of San Mateo, California. Before I learned about the 1960s Chicano Power movement and other brown freedom fighters, as a curious teenager in the 1980s, black freedom fighters served as surrogate political role models for brown people like me. Brown people, like all Americans, have learned a lot from watching black people, black leaders, fight white institutions for freedom, justice, and for the betterment of America.

Upon closer reading, I later noticed the Medium writer, Marley K., also called out some black people, too, for being racist! The times, they are a’changin’. Now, I always thought it was a contradiction in terms to call a person of color a racist because racism is the abuse of institutional power. American institutions are predominantly white institutions. The dominant culture is white, so white people are in a position to wield institutional power, not people of color. I guess if a person of color buys into the me-first notions of American capitalism as a path out of self-ghettoization, then I guess that might explain the black and brown folks in Trump Nation. It seems like tragic cognitive dissonance, Stockholm Syndrome, or trauma bonding of some sort. Correct me, if I’m wrong, but… I thought when a person of color hates on a white person, that would be bigotry or ethnocentrism, but never racism because racism, again, is the abuse of institutional power, which in the American context is the abuse of white privilege.

In her exquisite rant, Marley K. acknowledged that not all black and brown people are racist. And there’s some hope for brown people, too. The invasion of the bodysnatchers ain’t got all of us yet.

Black and Brown people stood in the rain. We lost days of work we couldn’t afford; we voted early and did the electric slide in line waiting to vote. Black and Brown folks took ballots to nursing homes, took our 100-year-old elders to the polls, and registered millions of new voters to counter the voter suppression during a pandemic. Many of us didn’t vote for Joe, we just voted against Trump. We weren’t voting to save America and White people as much as we were voting to save ourselves. Joe Biden even had to admit he owes his presidency to Black people. If it were left up to White people, we’d be reelecting the Trump crime syndicate for more of the same.

But make no mistake, America hasn’t changed.

For people of color, naturally, our understanding of racism is always less theoretical than that of the average white person because it comes from a lifetime of experiencing racism. Not every American has a fully formed capacity to empathize with others. And when you are little kid, who is brown or black, and you experience racism, that is some fucked up shit. Racism, when you’re a child, is child abuse. We can’t be surprised when kids don’t grow up to be model citizens, when they were exposed to racism, poverty, and other societal ills at an early age. Most white people, well-to-do white people, don’t seem to understand this. Right-wingers blame personal agency, poor personal choices, deny the impacts of early childhood development, and ignore basic psychology literature. Those in power clearly don’t understand. Poor, working class type white people, who grew up around people of color, have a better understanding than so-called educated liberals.

Some white people are like brothers and sisters to people of color, allies. But some 74 million people, maybe more, most of the entire Republican Party (mostly whites, but people of all colors) are not allies because they voted for four more years of Trumpism. That’s a whole lot of pro-racist willpower right there. And, if the Republican insistence on overriding the will of the majority of American people succeeds, we might have a lifetime of Trumpism, if Trump were to have his dictatorial druthers. Yesterday, “December 8 was a statutory ‘safe harbor’ deadline by when states were to finalize voting results certification, though the Trump legal team stated it would disregard the deadline. Every state, but Hawaii, had certified its results by December 7.” So, we may or may not be out of the woods yet. But those 74 million Americans backing Trump have no problem with institutional racism and support ever more draconian legislation targeting people of color. They still want four more years of Trump’s racism and authoritarianism.

And where was the opposition to Trump Nation? The Democrat Party and Biden 2020 had no platform to speak of, and they beat back Bernie Sanders and others, who actually did have a platform, campaign promises, and an agenda to make it happen. The only reason Biden beat Trump was because people of color, mainly blacks, voted against Trump and shifted America’s political pendulum away from the Republican Party and toward the Democrat Party. But, says Marley K., there’s about to be a problem because America has been exposed as racist. It is now patently undeniable. And, yet, liberals and other ostensibly non-racist Americans are showing no indications of any meaningful reconciliation.

America needs a post-Civil War, post-slavery American Truth and Reconciliation process, like post-apartheid South Africa did when they finally decided they had to make amends for their racist past. Unfortunately, we have a two-party dictatorship, which colludes to block alternative political parties from the presidential debates and from ballot access in states across the nation with top-two primary laws and whatnot. So, we must admit that the Democrat Party is not a sincere opposition party, as Marley K’s essay rant seems to understand (although it doesn’t state explicitly). Without a sincere opposition party, what political power do people of color and their allies have? Given all of this, it sure does look like white people love racism more than they love humanity.

Messina

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MEDIUM—[8 NOV 2020]

White People Love Racism More Than They Love Humanity

White people overwhelmingly chose racism, inequality, hate, and white rage in 2020.

White People Will Let You Down Every Time

I knew it. I told you so.

Black people, per usual, have saved this shithole country from the grips of fascism and Jim Crow. We voted for overwhelmingly Joe Biden on election night, despite having better, more progressive options, because we knew enough White people wouldn’t do the right thing to save Black and Brown folks from hate, fascism, tyranny, and White domestic terrorism. I’m thankful for Trump’s presidency because White people can no longer deny racism doesn’t exist. Trump’s presidency also revealed racism, white rage, and White domestic terrorism are alive, well and thriving.

The results of the 2020 Election revealed White America is moderately to extremely conservative and incoherently racist in ways that have yet to be examined. Racism, White Supremacy, and righting the ship was on the ballot this election cycle, and a large majority of White people overwhelmingly chose Donald J. Trump and his brash style of racism. Seventy million people voted for that dumb asshole.

We have problems, Houston. Serious problems.

— snip —

Read more at MEDIUM.

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[1] Glenn Greenwald helped co-found The Intercept to be a publication, which gave its writers the type of editorial freedom, which he always enjoyed, and which blog aggregator websites, like Medium and Substack, are promising “authentic” people, who use their platforms to write and blog.

[2] And, as I often do, I suppose I wanted to share this article with others because I felt it was an important perspective, which needs to be heard, and which is not often heard in the dominant media. Simply re-posting an article is sometimes considered “Spam”, as Medium.com does. Maybe it is. I dunno. I expect to be able to do whatever the fuck I feel like doing on my blog, as long as I don’t engage in plagiarism, and as long as I give credit where credit is due. I wish I had more time and resources to create a proper website; but it’s all good. We’ll do our best and keep moving forward.

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[9 DEC 2020]

[Last modified on 9 DEC 2020 at 09:17 PST]