Category Archives: National media

White-shaming

National media, Thursday posts, , ,

Why America Stays Stuck

In the future, I may ignore such expressions. For the record, someone’s actually said this in print.

On a CNN program not long ago, one white man, who proudly claimed his belief in white supremacy, had the audacity to say, “I wish we had picked our own cotton.”

So do we. African Americans, I mean. We wish you had picked your own cotton, nursed your own babies, tilled your own fields, built your own roads, and done the scut work in factories that made the Industrial Revolution the “success” that it was.

You didn’t, though. African Americans made this country with their hard labor, as slaves and later as individuals caught up and used in the Convict Leasing programs in this country. …

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There can be no dialogue with toxic speech.

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Debate opposing views, don’t label them hate: Column

Over the weekend, I very nearly un-Friended a church member on Facebook.

This woman is a pillar of the congregation, exceptionally gifted, and holds several important offices.  But she frequents certain web sites that spew forth racial hatred, and she Likes certain items, and they show up in my Timeline.  I will never voluntarily expose myself to such material.  (Related:  Change your diet.)  There can be no dialogue with it:  even to take it seriously is poisonous to my soul.

The First Amendment will not protect me from it.  On the contrary, hate speech is normally protected.  As are lies.  As is verbal bullying.  And heckling.

One can choose, however, what one pays attention to.

Milo Yiannopoulos is a troll.

As likewise are Ann Coulter and Joan Walsh.

There may be no lawful way to silence them, but those persons and organizations (such as Young Republicans) who sponsor them, hire them, and give them gratuitous platforms, may be persuaded that the nation deserves better.

Originally posted 2016-06-15.

Don’t mess with the Easter bunny …

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Bookmarks:
Don’t mess with the Easter bunny … • Anarchy in the streets • Why Trump is winning • The stewardess took her shoes off and ran • Return of the drama queen • And if he’d been white?

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Orthodoxy

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White Americans are nearly as blind to their racism as ever before

An orthodoxy is a system of ideas that adherents insist one must accept without question.  In other words, a set of dogmas.

Every media outlet has one.  It may be implied or explicit; flexible or rigid; narrow or broad; but it’s there.  It defines what ideas that media outlet will allow to be expressed.  In publishing media, it determines what will and won’t get published.

An obstacle facing me in my hopes of getting published, is that I seem somehow always to run afoul of a given media outlet’s orthodoxy.

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“Do the Right Thing,” part 2

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Prosperity belongs not to the righteous, but the wise.

In the days immediately following the initial mistrial of Baltimore Police Officer William Porter on charges relating to the death of Freddie Gray, Bounce TV broadcast Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing several times.  I could not help seeing this as a commentary on the mistrial.  Bounce had likewise shown the film several times in the days following the April 2015 riots.

The film focuses on events surrounding a pizzeria in a New York City ‘hood on the hottest day of the summer.  Sal is the Italian-American owner of the pizza place; Mookie, played by Spike Lee, is a young African-American employee.  At closing time, a group of people led by Radio Raheem enter the store to insist Sal take down his “Wall of Fame,” which displays portraits of Italian-American celebrities (only).

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