In a better world, just saying "context matters" would suffice

Of course we do not live anywhere near that world. On the upside, we have Ta-Nehisi Coates, who has the patience to elaborate and the chops in so doing to make me say, for only about the 4,037th time, that's what I think, and that's what I would have said, if only ...

Minor point of disagreement, with one of TNC's examples: I'm fine with Matt Barnes's use of "niggas" in the context of his tweet. I don't expect that I'll ever use the term, being white, and I have no problem with that (as all too many seem to). In fact, I think TNC's call of "inappropriate" on this one contradicted the thrust of his argument. But no biggie: he's entitled to judge differently, and I can imagine why he might. And, in fairness, he was contrasting "inappropriate" with some far more heinous events.

On a thoroughly unrelated note, I happened to have been watching the game that led to the tweet, and I thought Barnes deserved to be the only player booted. The third man into a transient exchange of shoves between a pair of NBA players never, to at least three decimal points, has any business being there. Save that "enforcer" nonsense for the NHL and pro wrestling, if you'll pardon the redundancy.

"Baratunde Thurston teaches you 'How To Be Black'”

Here's the first couple of slides to get you started:

See the rest.

Baratunde, if you didn't already know, is digital director of The Onion. The slides are part of the pimping celebration of the release of his autobiography. Of course there is an affiliated website filled with fanciness, because, come on, digital director. [Insert joke about bossing around white people here. But keep it tasteful so as not to upset Charles Murray fans.]

Want to participate in a video chat? Friday 3 Feb 11am EST, on the WaPo's site. See his blog and Twitter feed, also.

Eye-opener

It's not all fast cars and supermodels in the life of a pro athlete:

Emlen Tunnell, a star defender for the glittering, magnetic Giants, had been summoned to Green Bay. It was 1959, and the new Packers coach, Vince Lombardi, traded for Tunnell, ending his run of 11 record-setting seasons in New York.

A longtime Giants assistant, Lombardi was plotting a thorny overhaul of the bumbling Packers and needed allies from his roots. Tunnell, a dynamic safety and a Manhattan fixture in the golden era of New York sports, gamely made the trip halfway across the country to northeastern Wisconsin.

On arrival in his new home, Tunnell was told he had just doubled the black population in Green Bay. The city’s other African-American, Tunnell heard, was the shoeshine man at the Hotel Northland.

The word inspirational has been overused beyond the point of banality, so let me just say that, even if you don't give a hoot about football, the whole article is truly worth your time. Some things to applaud about Lombardi that I didn't know, too.

(h/t: KK, via email)

My man Bill Maher

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Say what you will about him. I'm not denying he has his flaws. But when he's on, he is on.

Say it again: Deliberately Black.

So good.

Swiped from C&L. Thanks, as always, to RM.

Making Sense

Can't we just appoint Ta-Nehisi Coates and Chris Rock to be the Twin Czars of Propriety on Race-Related Matters and be done with it?

That Great Writer Ta-Nehisi Coates ...

... beautifully asks you, in "How to Write About Black People (and Other Humans), to read another piece of great writing, by Jelani Cobb: "Long Odds."

Cobb's piece is about Eddie Long, one of those megachurch pastors, who has recently gotten some attention due to accusations made by four young men that he made advances on them. And, not at all surprisingly, there have since followed some eyebrow-twitching pictures of Long (cellphone self-portraits), now available everywhere.

I do not much care about this specific case, except that I am always ready to laugh (while, admittedly, feeling a tinge of pity) at any story involving fundies in their undies. But those two posts are mighty fine.

Hat tip to blackink12, via @GeeDee215. And right about now, I have so many tabs open with good things to read that my computer has about seized and I need to reboot. Or my brain. One of those two.

Marvelous thing, this Internet.

__________

(FITU, of course, due to Teh Sadlys. Whose commenter r€nato has forever made me unable to keep a straight face about the word vanilla.)

One More TNC

Along the lines of the previous post, and just in case you haven't gotten the hint to go directly to the source, here's one more from which I cannot help but excerpt a lot. It's part of "Why Black Writers Tend Not to Shout."

(Aside: note diff betw URL and title.)

In 2007 Barack Obama began campaigning for the presidency. Since that time, his reception by the American Right has included claims that he is--among other things--a covert Muslim, a welfare thug, a "racist...with a deep-seated hatred of white people or the white culture," and as a president with a policy of landing on the side that "favors the black person."

During the 2008 campaign, one GOP congressman called Obama "uppity", while another referred to him as "that boy." At the Values Voters summit, vendors showed up hawking Obama Waffles, while a California Republican group sent out fake food stamps with Obama surrounded by ribs and chicken. By the end of the campaign, Palin-McCain supporters were repeatedly showing up at rallies publicly announcing that Obama was a Muslim, mocking him as a monkey and openly flaunting the fact that they opposed him because he was black. The monkey jokes continued into Obama's presidency--with South Carolina GOP activist Rusty DePass noting that an escaped gorilla was "probably just one of Michelle Obama's ancestors."

The racial nuttiness has not been limited to Obama. His first Supreme Court nominee, was dismissed as "Miss Affirmative Action 2009." His second nominee has been dismissed for having been influenced by one of the architects of desegregation. Lindsey Graham, a supposedly sensible Republican, attacked health care because it would hurt his state, which is "31 percent African-American population." (Presumably, all those people are poor, while all the white people in South Carolina are not.) When John Lewis walked to the House to vote for health care, he was called a nigger by the mob, and then called a liar for claiming as much. After Tom Tancredo opened the Tea Party convention by calling for literacy tests and asserted that, "people who could not even spell the word 'vote', or say it in English, put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House," the conventions convener lauded Tancredo for giving "a fantastic speech."

Perhaps you could argue that some of these instances aren't about race. Certainly, you could note that many of them are about race plus several other factors. But even granting those points as caveats, what you have is disturbing pattern among the GOP that sometimes floats up to the top. Black writers working in the mainstream, and even at liberal publications, are in a constant dialouge with white audiences. It is utterly useless, and to some extend brand-damaging, to repeatedly call on conservatives to repudiate racism in their midst. What many of us chose to do instead is to try to extend some sympathy, and get into the head of the offending party, in hopes of building a bridge.

I think, for those who are skeptical of the NAACP, something of a turn-about is in order. If you were black what would you think, faced with this pattern? If you were the NAACP what would you to say to this? The downside of the Obama approach, one that I still embrace, is that it tacitly supports Chait's notion that conservative opposition to Obama has "generally lacked much in the way of racial animus." I just don't think the facts bear that conclusion out--at all.

Shouting and resolutions are not my way. I firmly believe that racists, and those who work with the machinery of racism, must ultimately answer for themselves. But without someone shouting, we tend to forget and to elide uncomfortable realities that we have deemed unspeakable. I'm haunted by the words of a black Republican, who was a member of the group that sent out the Obama foodstamps. "This is what keeps African-Americans from joining the Republican Party," she said. "I'm really hurt. I cried for 45 minutes."

The leader of the group responded by asserting her support for Alan Keyes.

(x-posted)

More TNC

Following up from earlier …

Ta-Nehisi tweets (via @elonjames):

An occasional reminder as to the precise nature of the motherfuckers you are dealing with.http://bit.ly/cdSevD

That URL leads to this:

A Final Thought

Here is former head and current spokesperson for the Tea Party Express Mark Williams satirically responding [← link omitted, for reasons soon to be made obvious --bjk] to the NAACP:

[That really stupid, racist, and unfunny thing noted earlier. Or, click through to TNC's post for a copy. --bjk]

Williams has since taken the original down and posted a half-hearted justification. Mark Williams is the same man who has denounced Barack Obama as "Indonesian Muslim" and a "welfare thug." If Mark Williams is not a racist, then there are no racists in American society--a position which many, some liberals among them, no doubt find plausible.

It's been asked in comments, a few times, what good has come of the NAACP's resolution. I would not endeavor to speak for anyone but myself when I say that I owe the NAACP a debt of gratitude. I have, in my writing, a tendency to become theoretically cute, and overly enamored with my own fair-mindedness. Such vanity has lately been manifested in the form of phrases like "it's worth saying" and "it strikes me that..." or "respectfully..."

When engaging your adversaries, that approach has its place. But it's worth saying that there are other approaches and other places. Among them--respectfully administering the occasional reminder as to the precise nature of the motherfuckers you are dealing with. It strikes me that this is a most appropriate role for the nation's oldest civil rights organization.

(x-posted)

TNC's take

Occasional Blogginghead and perennial wise man Ta-Nehisi Coates has a long blog post up (via) about recent doings. Here's just a taste.

The NAACP's announcement initially struck me in much the same the way. But some hours of considering this have proven to me that my initial skepticism says more about the broad American narrative of race and racism, then it does about the justness of the NAACP's charge.

I think it's worth, first, considering the record of American racism, and then the record of the Tea Party and its allies. Racism tends to attract attention when it's flagrant and filled with invective. But like all bigotry, the most potent component of racism is frame-flipping--positioning the bigot as the actual victim. So the gay do not simply want to marry, they want to convert our children into sin. The Jews do not merely want to be left in peace, they actually are plotting world take-over. And the blacks are not actually victims of American power, but beneficiaries of the war against hard-working whites. This is a respectable, more sensible, bigotry, one that does not seek to name-call, preferring instead change the subject and strawman. Thus segregation wasn't necessary to keep the niggers in line, it was necessary to protect the honor of white women.

There's much more goodness.

(x-posted)

[Added] Follow-up.

Hey, whaddya know ...

... a Norman Rockwell painting that is not excessively icky.

Norman Rockwell: Proud Possessor (1940)

From the NYT's slide show here. Article here.

Hurrah for our Freedoms!

In honor of Independence Day and The Unveiling of the Plaques (And Not The Dental Problem Kind Either), Wonkette has published a guest post from "Cord Jefferson," titled "Thanks For Building the Capitol, Slaves!" (Left unreported: whether Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) cried.)

Being that he is a professional writer and all, do you think Wonkette paid him for this work?

Ha ha! You thought that was a racial joke, which, as every RealConservative™ and card-carrying member of the Republican Party will tell you, makes YOU the real racist!

No, it was actually a joke about how no one gets paid to do journalism anymore, in America. (Except for The Big Five.) (And Megan McArdle. (Thanks to Lóðurr?))

In conclusion, it is a good post. Go read it.

(?)

The Non-Angry Black Man

Jonathan Capeheart, and earlier, Betty Cracker, make good points about President Obama being his usual calm, cool, and collected self during this whole BP leak mess. (You may have heard some grousing about this.)

There are some things in both of those posts to think about and keep in mind, even if you don't -- as I don't, and as the authors don't -- want to try to make this the complete explanation for a complex human being.

Reminder to MoDo, Carville, and the rest of the usual suspects:

P.S. Here's what I said over at Rumproast, where I came across the above links:

Capeheart’s correspondent, Doug Graham, makes a good point about the sports angle. I have of course been glued to the NBA playoffs, and it frequently occurs to me to marvel that with all the banging under the boards—cf. Rule 1: “No layups in the playoffs”—not to mention the pressure and the stakes, how rarely one sees a fight.

And then I think about hockey.

(pic. source)

WE ARE OUTRA ... what? Oop ... uh, never mind.

Someone started spreading the story that black guy Bryant "Black" Gumbel (who's black) got all blackety-black on the teevee, saying that the "paucity of blacks makes the Winter Olympics look like the GOP Convention."

Which he did ...

EMBED THE VIDEO!!!1! CROSSLINKERS ARE GO!!!1!

... in 2006.

Cue mad updating of blogposts in the wingnutosphere ("Hurry up, c'mon … fuck, is flashback one word or two?"), including Dan Riehl, "The blogprof," and The King of InstaPost Now, Think Later Maybe: Glenn Harlan Reynolds. None of whom are racists. Just ask any of them.

Start here.

__________

The only way this could have been more entertaining would have been if Ann Althouse had been awake when the video starting buzzing around. It could have been The Revenge of I Stand By My Analysis.

(x-posted)

Steal The Whole Thing

curv3ball:

Obama is nothing without a teleprompter, other than when he’s waxing the floor with top GOP lawmakers in a little unscripted Q & A slaughterfest. But he is part African, which means he’s dumb. Get it.

Sarah Palin, on the other hand, well, obviously, white people don’t need no teleprompters. Even for scripted Q & A fluff fests.

Fear the Dumbpocalypse.

"Is Charles Barkley Blacker Than Snoop Dogg?"

This is just a wonderful piece of video (about three and a half minutes long):

(alt. video link)

Hurrah for, as Senator Bulworth once called it, progressive racial deconstruction.

Tip of the hat of many colors to JonIrenicus for the link, and to Razib Khan and Eliezer Yudkowsky for mentioning it in this week's Science Saturday diavlog on Bloggingheads.tv. The latter bears a look or a download, if you've got an hour for some interesting speculation about the coming age of human gene manipulation. It is for sure the first time I've ever heard the phrase "recreational genetics." (Don't be scared -- it's probably not what you think.)

The Jokes ...

... they just write themselves.

Hurrah! Finally a sports league where Rush Limbaugh can buy a franchise!

They were going to call it the White Nationalists' Basketball Association, but "WNBA" was already taken, by Negroes! BOOM!

(I'm sure the other Wonketteers will come up with much better.)

Eric Holder's Speech On Race

Here is the Attorney General of the United States addressing an audience at the Department of Justice -- and obviously, the rest of the nation as well -- this past Wednesday, 18 February 2009. The speech is about 16 minutes long. [Added: transcript here.]

(alt. video link)

Ta-Nehisi Coates, from whom I swiped this video, called this "Eric Holder's Boring-Ass Speech On Race." He also called it "unremarkable and vague." I do not share these views. While it wasn't the greatest thing I've ever heard on the subject (pretty tough to beat Barack Obama's "A More Perfect Union," obviously), I thought it was a solid speech.

I suppose I can see what Ta-Nehisi was getting at, but I think he made the mistake of assuming everyone else listening to this speech would have spent as much time thinking about these issues as he has, or finds them as easy to talk about as he does. I think Holder said some things that a lot of people would have heard for the first time, or at least, could certainly stand to be reminded of. The comments under Ta-Nehisi's post, which come from an above-average online community in my judgment, bear this out without question. Check the pig-headed statements, check the hypersensitivity, check the honestly puzzled questions and sincere groping for responses.

Maybe Ta-Nehisi was speaking partly tongue in cheek, especially regarding his post title, since the only thing the MSM seems to have reported about this speech was the phrase nation of cowards, which of course, led to no end of hysteria.

Whatever Ta-Nehesi really meant, I think Eric Holder is correct in his assessment, even though the appellation of course does not apply to every last individual, and I salute him for his directness. We have more than enough euphemisms, especially when it comes to dealing with (or not) the issue of race relations.

__________

Charles M. Blow has a good column in which he reflects on That Phrase.

[Added] Leonard Pitts Jr. has another. (h/t: grits-n-gravy)

__________

Little too preachy and earnest for you?

Fair enough. Here is something from a little over a year ago that should help, one of my all-time favorite segments from one of my all-time favorite shows:

(alt. video link)

No One Could Have Predicted

On Thursday, I passed along Righteous Bubba's notice that Michael Crook had announced he was going on a hunger strike until Barack Obama resigned, "because a country with a colored president simply isn’t worth living in."

At this point, I will only consume minimal liquids, until one of two things happens: either he does the right thing and resigns, or I die of hunger.

No, I am not whistling Dixie, and no I am not fibbing. I will post video journals as this progresses to either his resignation or my death.

Apparently, I am the only right-thinking White brother who has the balls to put his life on the line for his race. Pity, that.

Shame that it took Michael freaking Crook to stand up and do what’s right. What’s right for the White race, and what’s right for America, although the former is much more important.

And blah, blah, blah.

ArtSparker made what seemed like the right call in the Comments here:

I think there's something children do to scare their parents, holding their breath until their faces turn blue...

To pick up the story, let's go back to the source.

Update one (Friday evening):

It’s been almost three days….I’m dizzy, tired, and feel as if I could eat a horse, but this is a sacrifice I am happily making for my race.

You must resign, Barack Hussein Obama.

Update two (Saturday morning):

Just like yesterday, I remain on hunger strike, as I have since a little after 9pm local time on Tuesday.

I remain dizzy, and headaches, blurred vision, and extreme fatigue are the orders of the day. Yet, I am cheered by the fact that I am making the ultimate sacrifice for my race.

Update three (Saturday, a few minutes after noon):

Sometimes you have to make choices. With the purchase of an extra value meal at around 11 this morning, I ended my hunger strike, which lasted three days. Might I say that a Big Extra value meal at McDonald’s never tasted so good.

I think Matt Dinniman's artwork sums it up best:

Michael Crook: I'll huff and I'll puff ...

Looks like ArtSparker got everything right except the color.

Must Hear Radio

Monday's edition of Fresh Air features two interviews, the first with Congressman John Lewis, the second with Ta-Nehisi Coates.

Lewis I'm sure needs no introduction. Coates, if you don't know, is someone you should. At the risk of using the A-word with respect to a black man, he is one of the best I've ever heard at articulating his generation's views on race. He has lots to say on other topics, too. You can read his blog on the Atlantic's site.

Both of these guys are well worth listening to, and it's really something to hear their two perspectives. You can stream the audio from the page at the above link site; if you want a direct download, you can subscribe to the Fresh Air podcast right on the same page.

Blowback Blowback

The latest in the Chip The Magic Saltsman saga ...

I mentioned on Saturday that several prominent Republicans had publicly criticized Saltsman for his dubious taste in gift CDs. Now, via TPM, I see that Politico has a story describing a rallying-around of sorts by other Republicans. The media are being blamed for "hypersensitivity" on matters of race, the people who spoke out are being chastised for trying to gain advantage in their own pursuit of the chairmanship, various Republicans are parroting the "just a joke" line, Rush Limbaugh has waddled in and is promoting the song on his website, and so on. Some of the people quoted in the Politico piece are saying this could actually help Saltsman in his bid to become the next head of the RNC.

There's probably some truth to the charges of political opportunism, but for the rest: no. If it wasn't out and out racism, it was at least an unfunny slur with heavy racial overtones. Really, there's just no smarts in trying to defend Saltsman for this stunt. Did the GOP not learn anything from George Allen's "macaca" moment? It's as though they're saying, "We don't think we're a marginal enough party. How can we move farther out on the fringe?"