Professor Harris-Lacewell was on MSNBC’s “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” and she said something profound that will help me explain in the future how you can be racist and not use the N-word or join the Klan and why many white people claim not to see racism, or claim it doesn’t exist, unless it is overt like that.
[I]f you regularly support public policy which will have a disparate impact, creating greater inequality for people of color, that that is racially biased.
OLBERMANN: I was going to ask you about this sincerity of misperception. I`ve always wondered if we`re dealing with the kind of mental euphemism that in previous — when there have been previous backlashes against advances in relations between races, they were still in a time when it was OK to come out and campaign on the “we`ve done enough for them” platform, which was essentially done in 1966 by the Republicans. They won a boat load of seats in the House running on those platforms after the Civil Rights Acts. You can`t say something like that anymore in almost any aspect of society. The fringes, obviously, but not anywhere in the mainstream. Is this inability to see racism and to need to provide a euphemism for it internal? They need to believe there`s no racism, and therefore they don`t see it?
HARRIS-LACEWELL: Maybe, but it could also be simply that we`ve done a really bad job in this country talking about what racism is. So many may feel that if they don`t use the ” N” word or if they don`t actively keep a black person from getting a job or spit on a black person when they see them, then they`re not racist. And we haven`t done a very good job of talking about the fact that if you regularly support public policy which will have a disparate impact, creating greater inequality for people of color, that that is racially biased. And we haven`t talked about, for example, privilege, or we haven`t talked very well in the public about privilege. So that many white Americans feel like, well, I have a difficult circumstance; I`m losing my job; bad things are happening to me. So why should we be talking about race and racism? And we haven`t talking about, for example, how white privilege operates in the context of even, you know, an economic downturn. So it could be, in part, just sort of our fault in terms of a collective incapacity to talk about what racism really is.
Dear GOP, Just to let you know that real people are being hurt because you hate the unemployed. In this video from my local television station showed that 7500 people in my county will lose their benefits and not all of them are “just lazy”.
On this holiday weekend, please GOP stop hating America.
*Update*
Here is more proof that the GOP talking point about “the lazy unemployed” is full of crap. Jason Linkins at Huffington Post wrote:
But Linder’s example happens to be an exception. The basic reality for America’s job seekers is that currently there are five people looking for work for every job opening. The average unemployment benefit is a scant $290 per week. And, as Arthur Delaney reported on these pages in early June, there are other difficult-to-ignore facts that harpoon the notion that the unemployed are content to live off benefits:
Larry Mishel of the Economic Policy Institute pointed out that only 67 percent of the 15 million unemployed receive benefits. Even if all those people are enjoying the dole, shouldn’t businesses still be able to hire some of the other five million receiving no benefits at all?
Exactly. If unemployment benefits truly tamp down the motivation of job seekers, there would still be about five million people going after the jobs that Sharron Angle believes exist with a rabid intensity.
The 2010 World Cup is taking place in South Africa. The United States men’s national soccer team failed to make it to the quarterfinals but did win its group during group play. Some critics claim that the US should drop out since we haven’t won the tournament and some people claim that soccer isn’t very popular. The critics are wrong.
The men’s team has been stronger since a reorganization took place in the 1990’s. The team failed to qualify for the World Cup from 1954 to 1986. With a majority of players getting experience in top programs in Europe, the team is real close to making it to the quarterfinals on a regular basis. Major League Soccer is providing a steady place for lower level players a chance to move up and a strong fan base that transfer to the national team.
The United States women’s national soccer team has won 2 World Cups since it got started in 1991 and is ranked number 1 by FIFA.
Back in the day I played for the Hancock Soccer Association in Findlay. I played through elementary school all the way up to high school. Most of my friends played too.
I was disappointed the national men’s team didn’t make it to the quarterfinals but I thought they still did a decent job in getting a draw with England and winning the group.
Iam not a fan of mainstream news. Not just because they can make things up but because many national reporters don’t do their jobs any more. A perfect example is the fall out of the recent resignation of Dave Weigel, a reporter for the Washington Post, after private e-mails were published on a conservative website. Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic made a comment about Weigel not being a real reporter. That released the hounds.
Goldberg really has no room to talk about who a real reporter is as Glenn Greenwald noted:
Despite all of those war-cheerleading deceits — or, again, because of them — Goldberg continues to be held out by America’s most establishment outlets as a preeminent expert in the region. As Jonathan Schwarz documents, Goldberg is indeed very well-“trained” in the sense that establishment journalists mean that term: i.e., as an obedient dog who spouts establishment-serving falsehoods. That’s why Goldberg is worth examining: he’s so representative of the American media because the more discredited his journalism becomes, the more blatant propaganda he spews, the more he thrives in our media culture. That’s why it’s not hyperbole to observe that we are plagued by a Jeffrey Goldberg Media; he’s not an aberration but one of its most typical and illustrative members.
This is exactly what is wrong with US journalism. The responsibility of reporters is not to be “impartial”, their responsibility is to tell the truth. Should reporters have been unmoved by the fact that that Bush was torturing people? Should that not bother them as people? Should they be unmoved by the fact that Obama is still torturing people? Should they be unmoved by the fact that Bush sold a war based on lies, and millions of people were displaced, killed and injured as a result?
Is that we want? Sociopaths who have no personal opinions?
This was the same dust up after the Rolling Stone article brought down General McChrystal. the main discussion in the mainstream media was how the reporter “burned his bridges” by reporting how the General and his staff really felt. The story wasn’t about the reporter, the story was about McChrystal and his views and how that relates to the current war policy in Afghanistan. No one really gives a shit about how the story effected the reporter.
To paraphrase Sam Axe from the TV show “Burn Notice”: You know DC media… bunch of bitchy little girls.
The reporters and pundits trapped in the Beltway bubble of DC are too full of their self-importance and their need to protect their celebrity perks and that hurts America because they don’t do their actual jobs – reporting the truth.
It amazes me some of the crap people believe even when facts and the truth prove them wrong on a regular basis. I’m use to such “thinking” having been involved in the atheist/humanism/freethought movement for more than 15 years. I’m use to religious believers being stubborn but I have to slap my head when usually smart people believe stupid crap. Republicans seem to have a corner on that freaky behavior.
Markos at Daily Kos posts samples of the hate mail he gets being the founder of a major liberal blog. Here is a comment sent to him and his response:
“just a comment
I just recently discovered all this “interesting” information on your website and I have concluded one thing……..it is YOU and people like you that are responsible for my ripping up my DEMO-NUT card and becoming a PROUD REPUBLICAN! There is nothing more dangerous to America than a rabid left wing liberal. Well maybe a crazy jihadist with a bomb strapped to his chest; but you haven’t figured that out yet and probably you never will. Idiot.“
Dude, where have you been? A crazy jihadist might be able to kill some people, but liberals would provide (true) universal single-payer healthcare, work toward peace on earth, spread tolerance and equality of opportunity, hold greedy corporations accountable for their looting of America, work to replace fossil fuels with clean renewal energy, create a fair and sane immigration policy, and even the negotiating playing field between workers and big business.
Some Republicans get spoon fed the wacko idea that LIBERALS are destroying the country when the facts and the truth show that we would be so much better off as a nation if the liberals ran the government. Those pesky facts would also show that it was the work of the GOP in Congress and their corporate lords that brought us the 2008 economic collapse and helped make the Gulf oil spill worse that it needed to be.
Just look at the actual history of this country and you will see liberals and progressives leading the country forward and conservatives bring us down.
“I’m speaking totally for myself and I’m not speaking for the Republican Party and I’m not speaking for anybody in the House of Representatives but myself, but I’m ashamed of what happened in the White House yesterday. I think it’s a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown. In this case, a $20 billion shakedown with the Attorney General of the United States who is legitimately conducting a criminal investigation and has every right to do so to protect the interests of the American people participating in what amounts to a $20 billion slush fund that’s unprecedented in our nation’s history that’s got no legal standing and what I think sets a terrible precedent for the future,” said Barton.
“I’m only speaking for myself. I’m not speaking for anybody else, but I apologize. I do not want to live in a country where any time a citizen or a corporation does something that is legitimately wrong and is subject to some sort of political pressure that is, again, in my words, amounts to a shakedown. So I apologize,” he said.
Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) on June 17th 2010 hearing about BP Oil spill
And it isn’t just Joe Barton saying this about the escrow fund:
The fact is BP didn’t have to set the money aside. They could’ve waited until any legal cases were resolved or any other foot dragging methods a large company employs to keep from having to pay damages.
The GOP also ignores polling showing they are on the wrong team on this issue:
68 percent of respondents want more regulation of the oil industry;
72 percent favor “Barack Obama’s proposals to develop alternative sources of energy and reduce the amount of oil and other fossil fuels that are produced and used in this country”;
69 percent believe such plans will increase jobs.
According to the poll, opposition to increased offshore drilling has grown 10 points since May and is now twice as high as it was in 2008. Fifty-eight percent of those questioned support a six-month moratorium on new drilling in the Gulf and other offshore sites; 68 percent favor increased regulation of the oil industry in this country.
“There is a gender and generation gap on offshore oil drilling – women and younger Americans are less likely to support drilling offshore and more likely to support a moratorium,” says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland.
Measures that directly target BP are also popular – 63 percent favor lifting the liability cap on BP and 53 percent would support criminal charges against some BP employees or executives.
Then we have the deficit hawks who show up around election time to whine about money being spent. It’s different this time because we are still in financial trouble and if these hawks get their way we might end up in another economic collapse. As Economist Paul Krugman wrote recently:
Many economists, myself included, regard this turn to austerity as a huge mistake. It raises memories of 1937, when F.D.R.’s premature attempt to balance the budget helped plunge a recovering economy back into severe recession.
In America, many self-described deficit hawks are hypocrites, pure and simple: They’re eager to slash benefits for those in need, but their concerns about red ink vanish when it comes to tax breaks for the wealthy. Thus, Senator Ben Nelson, who sanctimoniously declared that we can’t afford $77 billion in aid to the unemployed, was instrumental in passing the first Bush tax cut, which cost a cool $1.3 trillion.
The major drag on the economy is still health care costs since the reform that was passed was only a start and the major parts haven’t taken effect yet. Blogger digby wrote:
Any deficit scold who doesn’t put reducing health care costs at the very top of the agenda is just a demagogic crank doing the dirty work for the aristocratic overlords.
