Posted on 10/18/2012 1:08:16 AM PDT by Cincinatus' Wife
.............Once it became clear that old-fashioned racial prejudice truly was en route to extinction, a movement arose to insist that racism wasnt really down and out but had merely gone underground and lived on in nefarious guises, in some ways worse than before. In the mid-1980s came Critical Race Theory, which maintained that racism was ingrained and pervasive and never would fade. This was followed by unconscious racism, subliminal racism, implicit racism, and aversive racism, as underemployed academics and scholars sought to find words for inchoate feelings they found rather hard to describe. The gist of them all was that if people stopped saying or doing things thought of as racist it didnt mean they had ceased to be racist, but that they were sub-or-unconscious racists, who spoke in dog whistles or code. Thus, if you couldnt convict people of what they said or they did, you could still indict them for what you thought they were feeling, these poseurs being the most tricky and sinister problem, as their subconscious, denied, and subliminal bias was cloaked in the guise of good will.
This was good news to the philosopher Touré, who approvingly quoted Michelle Alexanders 2010 book The New Jim Crow, in his column in Time magazine: Decades of cognitive research demonstrates that both unconscious and conscious biases lead to discriminatory actions even when an individual does not want to discriminate. . . . The fact that you may honestly believe that you are not biased against African Americans, and that you may have black friends and relatives, does not mean that you are free from unconscious bias..........
.....such theories are staples of liberal discourse, used to discredit the center-right social agenda, based on Al Gores belief that people who call themselves colorblind use the term the way that duck hunters use their duck blindthey hide behind it and hope the ducks wont know what theyre up to, as the then vice president once more or less famously said. The appeal of these theories is that no proof is needed; they assume guilt, and there is no way for those accused to prove their innocence. The response to people who claim they have never done or said anything racist is to tell them that they are either subconsciously racist or have been sending out signals under the radar, by way of dog whistles or code.
This predicatethat racism is eternal, ubiquitous, and hidden, but not hidden so well that the left cannot find ithas given rise to a cascade of projection on the part of liberal pundits. In 2008, there was Timothy Noahs breakthrough masterpiece, When Skinny Means Black, claiming that references to Barack Obamas slender and ectomorph qualities were an invitation to readers or listeners to fixate on his tawny hue. Barack Obama is the first African American to win a major-party nomination for president. . . . African Americans are distinguishable from other Americans by their skin color. . . . When white people are invited to think about Obamas physical appearance, the principal attribute theyre likely to dwell on is his dark skin.
When Rep. Joe Wilson rudely erupted, You lie! during the presidents 2009 address on health care reform (Obama was talking about whether illegal immigrants would be qualified under his plan), a small voice sounded in Maureen Dowds subconscious, and she heard it say, You lie, boy!
When the Tea Party emerged, it was presumed to be racist, as there seemed no other possible reason to oppose this black president, and Tea Party members are the sort of peopleentrepreneurial, small-town, and middle-Americaliberals think racists should be. When Tea Party protests drove Obamas poll numbers down in the summer of 2009, Salons Joan Walsh said the GOP had blackened him. When the Obama taunt this summer of You didnt build that! met instantaneous pushback, Jonathan Chait of New York magazine said it had made people furious because it had made him seem black. The key thing is that Obama is angry, and hes talking not in his normal voice but in a black dialect, Chait wrote. As a matter of fact, it was not a black dialect, but a demagogues accent. It ticked people off not because it was black, but because he came off as derisive and mocking, and dismissive of entrepreneurs and hard work.
Under the new rules, words seldom mean what they used to, or what the speaker intended them to mean, but what liberals say are their coded meaningscues sent by racists to reach other racists. Federalism now means states rights, which means the Confederacy; government spending means money taken from whites, and sent to black supplicants; crime means Willie Horton, the convicted killer whose unsupervised furlough, defended by Michael Dukakis, tipped the presidency in 1988 to the elder George Bush. Merely to bring up the issue of welfare reform is said to be a dog whistle or racially charged. Its almost as if liberals assume most blacks are spongers or criminals, or think they arent troubled by assault and/or murder if the criminals are white like themselves.
Meanwhile, new words are constantly found to be racist, such as golf, used, according to MSNBC legend Lawrence ODonnell, to link Obama to Tiger Woods, the mixed-race golf legend who lost his wife and his image in a personal meltdown; and Chicago, Obamas headquarters and permanent residence, called out of bounds by ODonnells colleague Chris Matthews because black people live in it. At this rate, the next words to be defined as racial dog whistles will be and and the....
..... its a nice little racket, creating employment for sensitivity trainers, diversity counselors, race theory scholars, and other superfluous vendors of unneeded products. Second, its fun for the Democrats, who like telling minorities that Republicans want to burn churches, lynch people, and otherwise see them in chains. Third, and perhaps most important, its a self-esteem drug for a whole class of people, who seem to find their raison dêtre in the belief that they are not only more cool and more hip than their opposition, but also more noble at heart. This is an addiction they arent up to breaking and a habit they will not kick soon.
In the meantime, we must bear in mind that the liberals racist fixation rests on illusions of various sorts. First is their theory that they alone among mortals have rare and evolved clairvoyant powers that allow them, perhaps like The Shadow, to look into other mens minds. But what they find in them is just what they put there: It was Maureen Dowd who heard the word boy when she thought of Obama; it was Timothy Noah who could not stop thinking, Hes black! when he looked at Obama; its the MSNBC people whose hearing is tuned to discern all the dog whistles. Who else besides Lawrence ODonnell hears PGA tour as code for deep-rooted white insecurities about black male sexuality as Mark Steyn asked? To all of this there is one answer: Next time a liberal tells you he looked into your mind and found out youre a racist, tell him you looked into his mind and found out that hes nuts.
......The race addicts are also hypocrites, and this gives the great game away. Their keen ears are deaf to a whole range of insults: No one hears dog whistles blow in the direction of black conservatives, black moderates, or any blacks (or Hispanics, or women) not wholly embraced by the left. No complaints came from the dog-whistle-industrial-complex when Clarence Thomas was portrayed as a lawn jockey, or Condi Rice depicted in cartoons by white and male liberals as a parrot, a pickaninny, and Prissy in Gone With the Wind. No such complaints came a few months ago when Rep. Allen West was depicted in a campaign ad by his white opponent as sporting a gold tooth while beating a series of winsome blonde women.
For the perfect example of how this all works in practice, let us look to the transcript of Hardball for its program of August 15, just after the clean and articulate Vice President Biden had used a faux-Southern accent to tell a largely black audience that a Republican proposal on financial regulations would put yall back in chains. The program was devoted to disputing the claim that the phrase put yall back in chains was a slavery reference. Is shackles any different than chains? asked host Chris Matthews. The Republicans . . . have been using the word shackled. . . . Can you build a war, a civil war over that? Guest Howard Fineman was eager to help him.
Certainly not, Fineman assured him. Joe Biden was trying to be charming Joe Biden, and he made a mistake there, clearly. But the Romney campaigns motive in putting attention on it is not to cleanse the campaign of any racial reference, its probably just the opposite. If they can stir up arguments about race . . . theyre only too happy to do so. When Republicans complained about Bidens rhetoric they were shining light on the race issue. You want to bring up race. You want to talk about it. If you didnt, you would have let it go.
Got it? When Joe Biden talks about slavery, its proof that Republicans are race-baiting. This is how corrupt the Keep Race Alive movement has gotten. Treat it with the contempt it deserves.
Article - at source - worth a full read.
“Modern academia has gone astray and identity studies programs are in large part the culprit, argues author and poet Bruce Bawer in his new book The Victims Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind.
Identity studies sum up everything thats wrong with the humanities today, Bawer told The Daily Caller. Theyre about nothing other than group identity, group oppression, and group grievance. Instead of engaging in objective scholarly study of, say, black American history or womens literature, these departments are boosters for everything having to do with the group in question. Its all slogans. Kids dont learn anything other than to think of themselves as having been wronged by capitalism, by the West, by America, by white men.
Bawer says that this has consequences beyond the classroom................”
Fortunately this horrible economy coupled with mounting tuition costs have a LOT of people looking at affirmative action through different eyes; it is a government policy acknowledging the genetic inferiority of blacks, Hispanics, and women - and should be treated as such.
Leftists in academia and media (Schools of Education and Schools of Journalism) have buried the poison and misleading seed of distrust and resentment, deep into the minds of Americans.
They have truly divided & conquered...
Don't forget the dictionary of 'racial code words' that apparently is only available to a select few.
-----
There is a class of colored people who make a business of keeping the troubles, the wrongs, and the hardships of the Negro race before the public. Having learned that they are able to make a living out of their troubles, they have grown into the settled habit of advertising their wrongs-partly because they want sympathy and partly because it pays. Some of these people do not want the Negro to lose his grievances, because they do not want to lose their jobs.
Autobiographical Writings Booker T. Washington (1856-1915)
Excellent Booker T Washington quote on the Race Indusry. Lord, a century ago. Thanks for this.
The opposite of what liberals are saying is happening (is that a surprise?). Liberal elites shut down our ability to criticize the evil they do making citizens dependent and broken. - by calling it racism.
We objected to Communism for the same reasons - but there weren't enough blacks in communist counties years ago for elite white liberals to use that tactic. Conservatives need to stand up to communists elites and quit freaking out when they play the race card.
Yes, there are more dependent blacks than whites - and yes, that's bad for the black community. Yes, black crime IS dispassionately higher as a percentage - the issue needs to be addressed as a logical out-growth of dependency and fatherless homes. Time to stand up to white liberal elites - and speak truth to their bullheadedness...
You’re right.
Eric Holdren, Valerie Jarrett, the Clintons, Pelosi, Jackson, Obama - all their ilk, nurture dysfunction and dependence. They’d like all of America to be a crippled inner-city (except for where they live and rule from).
Who else besides Lawrence ODonnell hears PGA tour as code for deep-rooted white insecurities about black male sexuality as Mark Steyn asked? To all of this there is one answer: Next time a liberal tells you he looked into your mind and found out youre a racist, tell him you looked into his mind and found out that hes nuts.
Best thing I've read in months...Hats off to Noemie Emery - a person who totally 'gets it'....
Those truths and sentiments made me sit up and cheer too!
We studied men like Booker T and George Washington Carver in school.
They weren't black men who happened to accomplished something, they were accomplished men who happened to be black.
A subtle but very important difference, IMHO.
AMEN!
Bump!
And who could forget the sap-happy, braindead liberal teacher who said "peanut butter and jelly sandwich" was actually hatred of immigrants (b/c latinos do not eat PBJ's).
The contemporary emotionally charged slave plantation is still run by liberals with social programs and race baiting against the evil boogeyman republicans with horror stories that people of color should stay on the democrat plantation and do their bidding to stay in power.
Contemporary republicans have allowed liberals to run unabated with the lie and now partake in it themselves via " immigration reforrm" when it serves their political purposes.
Yup-—and Crazy Joe Biden told Blacks-—Romney’s gonna put them back in c—h—a—i—n—s....emphasizing “chains” as if it were five syllables.
I've looked into that teacher's mind and found she was nuts.... (thanks Mark Steyn...)
LOL-——good one.
America's Civil Rights laws are intended to redress Black Americans' grievances over years of slavery.
What did we ever do to immigrants? They broke OUR laws coming over the border from the Third World.
What "grievances" do these latino lawbreakers have that they demand be redressed under US civil rights laws?
If anybody should have grievances----it's we, the American people.
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