Category Archives: racism

Am I racist?

Indigenous--Reconciliation, racism

 

Recently, I posted that I agreed with the government of Manitoba when they decided not to financially support the request of families of indigenous women who had been murdered to find the remains of their bodies believed to be in a local landfill.  It would cost at least $84 million and perhaps as much as $184 million and might not result in a successful search. I also wonder what those remains will be like after months in the landfill. Frankly, I was very uneasy about my position. I won’t be buying a billboard to brag about how I am standing firm.  I am uneasy about my position.

 

I am usually on the side of indigenous people as readers of this blog will know by now. That does not mean I always agree with them by rote. I want to consider each issue on the merits. I know many people that I know and respect who disagree with me strongly on this issue.

I also want to respect indigenous families who believe that the human remains of deceased people are very important, even though I do not agree with this view.

Governments every day get requests for money and often big ones. As a result our political leaders must make careful decisions to spend public money wisely. Money is never unlimited even for governments who have much more than we do. We expect government to weigh competing claims carefully, dispassionately, based on logical reasoning and taking into consideration all relevant facts. This is not always easy.

I said that I would reach the same conclusion if the family claimants were white people from Wellington Crescent. I also believe that if members of my family ever made such claims, they should be treated the same way, even if I in the circumstances changed my views because they are so important to me. We naturally tend to advocate for our own families.

Governments however must treat like cases with like results. Race is irrelevant. If some groups place more importance on burying all remains that should be taken into consideration and in some cases might result in like cases being treated slightly differently. I think that might be justified.

As a result, I do not think I was racist in my views.

I take comfort from the fact that the recent survey showed 60% of indigenous people believed the government should pay to have a search made for the remains even though it was very expensive and might be risky for the people undertaking the search.  I take comfort from this because that means 40% of indigenous people polled did not believe the government should take such actions. Are the indigenous people who believe that, being racist? I think not.  I think people can reach the conclusion to the question on the basis of racism. But I think I was not racist in this case.

Does anyone disagree with me?

Can 40 million listeners be wrong?

American Fascism, Conspiracy Theories, Death of Truth, Hate, Populism, racism, Right-wing Extremism

 

In 1929 America and the rest of the world experienced a crash. The 1920s, called the Roaring Twenties, when wealthy people leaped enthusiastically in to popular endeavors such as Speak Easys and led the country into financial disaster and common people were desperately unhappy about it.

Father Coughlin stepped out of the fiery preacher role on radio and became the “conduit for a real and very understandable anger.” He rode a populist wave of anger. He became the voice of outrage and had spectacular success on the perfect medium for anger—the radio.  Anger has been the bed rock of talk radio ever since, particularly right-wing talk radio.

In the language of today, Father Coughlin was a populist—he was anti-communist but also anti-capitalist. He supported some unions, but not the more radical unions. He started out left, though not extreme left. As Justin Ling the host and writer of the CBC podcast Flame Throwers said, “Coughlin’s audience was estimated at 40 million listeners. At that time that was a third of America. Limbaugh at his height would have only about 1/20th of America.” This is much more than Fox News obtains today. These were huge numbers! And all this from a Canadian priest!

Meanwhile money poured into the church he was restoring and he arranged for it to build a huge iron cross, one the KKK could not burn.Coughlin turned to a politician he could support. It was someone who distrusted the political class like he did. So, he turned instead to someone who distrusted the bankers and big business. This was a champion of everyman. Not a far right politician.  This political leader was Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the author of the new deal.

Coughlin was clear, “It is either Roosevelt or ruin,” he said. FDR was a shrewd politician and “he saw in the radio priest, a new way of meeting the masses.” Coughlin saw in FDR a vehicle for his new social justice calling.  Justin Ling pointed out “As President, FDR recognized the visceral yet intimate power of radio. Through his fireside chats he entered into America’s living rooms as a trusted guest.” Coughlin inspired the President who followed suit. As Ling said, “Coughlin is no longer that small town Catholic  fighting anti-Catholic bias.” Later Coughlin abandoned FDR when he started making deals with the bankers rather than throwing them out as he done earlier. Later, when FDR made a deal with Stalin (and Churchill) Coughlin was furious. “Coughlin was vehemently anti-Communist.” He changed his slogan to “Roosevelt and ruin.”

Coughlin started his own political party and then turned to the dark side–the far right. He blamed Jews for their own persecution. He also adopted various conspiracy theories such as the one that Jewish bankers were part of an international cabal. He also cited the conspiracy theory of the elders of Zion which falsely claimed that Jews were part of a international Jewish conspiracy to rule the world. He claimed that Jews and Communists together were determined to take over America. Coughlin gave up on left wing causes and turned instead to supporting Hitler and the Nazis. He went about as far right as he could go.

He came to be called “the father of Hate radio.” Though someone else grabbed that crown from him about 100 years later.  We will get to him. Coughlin began to be abandoned by his erst while supporters. Many called out his mistaken litany of facts that were not facts at all. Federal regulators warned him that they would not allow the airwaves to abused in that manner. As Ling said, “In today’s world he was cancelled and de-platformed.” The radio star was done, but his influence lived on to be used by other pundits from other political persuasions.

As Ling said, “Coughlin was radio’s first real celebrity. He weaponized bombast but met his listeners where they were at. He sat in their living rooms and echoed their concerns. He helped to propel presidents to power. He tried to have a say in running the country from behind a microphone.”  He did all this by unleashing the power of hate. He was soon followed by many others.

The genie of political radio was out of the bottle and would never get back in. as Ling said, “Coughlin fell into conspiracy theories and hate as a way to energize and galvanize his support, and he would not be the last.” Once politicians, pundits, and frauds saw the power of hate, others followed as surely as night follows day. He proved how powerful the toxic combination of racism, hatred, and conspiracy theories could be.

 

 

 

White Supremacy: The Engine of the Right

Extremism, Hate, racism, Right-wing Extremism

 

After the revival of right wing talk radio that followed the abolition of the fairness doctrine, there was a steep rise in radio stations that catered to and even created the New Right.  This phenomenon was under appreciated, but it was real. “it was a torrent. You could listen to right-wing radio for 24 hours.”

Here was an early sample of such right-wing opinion heard on  one of the right-wing  talk radio shows : “The NAACP [National Association for the Advancement of Colored People] is using the American negro to advance some liberal white men’s political bias.” The racial element of course is not accidental. From the outset, white supremacy was a vital part of right-wing radio, just as it is today and just as it is on right-wing cable television such as Fox News, and of course the Internet which has come to supercharge racism among the right. White supremacy has been an engine of right-wing media and hence right-wing opinion.  As one commentator said on the CBC podcast the Flamethrowers,

That was new on national radio on a consistent basis in the 1960s. There were more than a dozen broadcasters that aired on more than 100 stations nation-wide by the 1960s. And for every one of the national guys there were dozens of local guys who were on 10 stations or 20 stations or 3 stations. ” They really were ubiquitous.

This was very profitable because these right-wing pundits didn’t need to bother with high production, research, or expensive programming. They loved to shoot from the hip. The listeners loved to hear them shoot from the hip. This was win-win for the owners of right-wing radio stations as the people soaked it up with irrational exuberance. All they needed to do was throw a bit of flame. It would inevitably find suitable timber and start a firestorm of some sort over some current right-wing issue close to the heart of its listeners.

Racist comments were particularly prevalent. And particularly popular. Racism is the unacknowledged driver of American right-wing talk radio. The entire right-wing movement has not acknowledged the significance of this ugly fact, but racism repeatedly shows its ugly racist side.

Logical Fear

Decline of the west, Fear, racism, Social democracy

 

As we drove through Salina Kansas where rich people have bought bunkers in an old missile silo to protect them from the impending chaos, I asked myself, for them what might that be?  I asked myself, ‘What generates fear among rich people”?  Particularly what triggers fear among rich white people?  I think the answer is obvious. They fear African Americans because they know they have the objects of horrific injustice that has never been remedied or compensated, and in many cases even acknowledge.

 

The election of Barack Obama led to a spike in survivalism. Many of white Americans feared (and this is the operative word) that as a black President he would ignite racial tensions because expectations of Blacks would rise too high and too fast. They thought Obama would react by restricting gun rights and expanding the national debt. Many of them loaded up on freeze-dried cottage cheese and beef stroganoff that had been promoted by Glen Beck and Sean Hannity. As Osnos reported, “A network of “readiness” trade shows attracted conventioneers with classes on suturing (practiced on a pig trotter) and photo opportunities with survivalist stars from the TV show “Naked and Afraid.” The fear of American whites—based on the fear of the tables being justifiably turned over against them—is a deep and pervasive fear. Such fear is a is a well spring of racism.

 

Not all survivalists think collapse is about to happen soon. Many of them take the position that the risk of catastrophe is so severe if a political collapse occurs that the smart betters will take precautions. They are playing the odds. As one of the techies told Evan Osnos The New Yorker writer, “Most people just assume improbable events don’t happen, but technical people tend to view risk very mathematically.” He continued, “The tech preppers do not necessarily think a collapse is likely. They consider it a remote event, but one with a very severe downside, so, given how much money they have, spending a fraction of their net worth to hedge against this . . . is a logical thing to do.”

 

To them,  in other words is fear is logical. It is not paranoia it is a reasonable fear.  Such fear may be unreasonable. By definition, it that is correct this is  not paranoia. One C.E.O. of another large tech company told Osnos, “It’s still not at the point where industry insiders would turn to each other with a straight face and ask what their plans are for some apocalyptic event…He went on, “But, having said that, I actually think it’s logically rational and appropriately conservative.”

I think it is a sign of the decline of western civilization.  The rich elites are losing their confidence. Do they know something we don’t?

 

Unreality: The Upside-down world of Huck Finn.

Classic Books, racism

 

When I first read the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn many years ago, I recall I was a bit disconcerted by the scenes that seemed to me to be far-fetched. It seemd unreal. It was unreal. Now I think that was the point.

There is lots of absurdity in the novel: the horrible advice Huck got from his father, the Duke and the Dauphin, Tom Sawyer’s absurd attempts to make the rescue of Jim conform to what he has “learned from novels,” even if that means putting Jim’s life in serious danger.  All of this mirrors the absurdity of the American morality which condemns a slave like Jim, the most good-hearted character in the novel, just because of the colour of his skin. All this while the conventional morality, praised the  casual brutality like that of Aunt Sally who was prepared to separate Jim from his wife and family for a few dollars. After all, in a “topsy-turvy” world as Twain called it what could be more unreal than reality? Reality has to be revaluated, turned on its head, to make any sense at all.

In the novel Huck helps Jim, the black slave, to escape from the bonds of his slavery, even though he believes by doing so he is committing a mortal sin that will lead him straight to hell. He is willing to pay the supreme price to save his friend. Yet at the same time, he can’t help playing tricks on Jim. The two hop on a raft and drift on the Mississippi but of course, the river flows south which is toward ever greater danger. They should be heading north to the free states. Their plan is to drift south until they reach the place where the Ohio river flows into the Mississippi river. Then they will head north. This is where the town of Cairo is located. Their plan was to sell their raft in Cairo and buy a steamboat ticket up north. A good plan, but like so many plans, it runs afoul of reality.

One dark and foggy night Jim and Huck get separated from each other. Jim is on the raft and Huck on a canoe. To Jim it looked like he had lost his only friend in the world. He was disconsolate. But Huck finds Jim in the night asleep at the rudder and decides to play a trick on old Jim.  A mean trick. When Huck wakes up Jim who fell asleep at the rudder, he pretends that they were never separated at all. He convinces Jim that he had been dreaming. They have a conversation in the night that might just as well have been between the French philosopher Descartes and Jean Jacque Rousseau. They argue about reality! Jim says Huck had been gone. Huck denies it, even though it was true.  Jim says to Huck: “Well, looky here boss, dey’s sumfn wrong, or wha is I? Now dat’s what I wants to know.”  To which Huck responds” “Well, I think you’re here, plain enough, but I think you’re but a tangle-headed old fool, Jim.” To which Jim replies like the most sophisticated philosopher: “”I is, is I? Well you answer me this: Didn’t you tote out de line in de canoe for to make fas’ a towhead?”  From there Huck’s lies completely befuddle Jim who can’t figure out if the separation happened or he just had a dream. Reality is fractured and that is immensely cruel to an escaping slave who must at all times have a solid bead on reality to keep alive. Jim replies: “But, Huck, it’s all plain to me as—” and Hucks cuts him off, “It don’t make no difference how plain it is; there ain’t nothing in it. I know, because I’ve been here all the time.” Jim concluded it was the most powerful dream he ever had.

Eventually, Jim realizes Huck has been tricking him. Fooling him and he is deeply hurt. After all he thought he had lost his best friend! What a cruel joke! Jim laments:

“When I got wid work, en wid de callin’ for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz broke mos’ bekase you wuz los, en I didn’t k’yer no mo’ what become er me en de raf. En when I wake up en fine you back ag’n, all safe en soun’, de tears come, en I coud’a’ down on my knees en kiss yo’ foot, I’s so thankful.  En all you wuz thinkin’ bout wuz you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck day is trash; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren’s en makes’em ashamed.”

Jim demonstrates that he is the real moral center of the novel. Not the Sunday school morality of Miss Watson.

When Jim explains it like that he realizes what a terrible thing he did in tricking Jim. Jim loved him and he treated him badly! As Huck said in response:

“It made me feel so mean I could almost kissed his foot to get him to take it back. It was fifteen minutes before I could work myself up to go an humble myself to a nigger, but I done it, and I warn’t ever sorry for it afterward, neither. I didn’t do no more mean tricks, and I wouldn’t done that one if I’d knowed it would make him feel that way.”

 

Even though it was unheard of for a white man to lower himself to the level of nigger Huck did exactly that. Reality was turned on its head. That is what Huck had to. Just he turned morality on its head.

 

Freeing the master and the slave and the victim

Classic Books, Freedom, racism

 

Azar Nafisi, the literature critic who wrote that wonderful book The Republic of the Imagination, points out how the slave Jim is the first person who encountered Huck after Huck staged his death in order to escape from his “smothery” world. Huck depends on Jim to show him how to survive on their raft. Nafisi said Jim “resurrects him.” He certainly frees Huck in more than one sense.

Later, when the white mob is after Jim, Huck literally saves or resurrects Jim from a watery grave. They save each other. They help each other to freedom. This is the central relationship in the novel.

This relationship in my mind proves that Mark Twain was right when he said, “Lincoln’s proclamation [when Abe Lincoln proclaimed slavery was abolished]…not only set the slaves free, but set the white man free also. White men were enslaved by a false and wicked ideology—white supremacy—from which they desperately needed freeing. Some have still not been freed.

According to Nafisi, later Huck realizes that “he needs to feel, to empathize with others in order to become more fully himself. All through their adventures Huck finds his own moral compass with the help of Jim. As soon as they meet under new circumstances, Jim is transformed from “Miss Watson’s nigger” to his best mate as they go from “he and I” to “we.”

This is how Huck and Jim free each other. That is a racist and non-racist can free each other. The Adventurers of Huckleberry Finn is a novel about freedom. This is its essential theme. It is a complex book in a simple form. I think it is the greatest American novel and might even be the greatest novel ever written.

In Canada Canadian non-indigenous people urgently need to be saved from their ideology of white supremacy. Allowing indigenous people to liberate themselves would lead to the liberation of non-indigenous people. This is an essential insight we can gain from reading a novel like the Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

 

Fear and Slavery and Injustice

Classic Books, racism

 

I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. America is a wonderful country but it is consumed by fear. They need a military that costs them as much as the next 9 most expensive militaries cost combined! They need that fire power because they fear retribution for their sins of slavery of blacks and genocide of indigenous people. The more guilty your conscience the more protection you need.

 

There is a good example of this in the novel The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The incident happened on the Phelps farm, a small plantation of slaves. There was a minor slave revolt on the Phelps farm; what every slaveholder dreaded. They dreaded that justice would be imposed on them.

 

The rebellions started when “one nigger was crazy but there was “a dozen helping him” to steal a nigger slave.  There was a “plumb crazy” nigger  with a dozen disciples! Who else would make a “ladder out of rags,” to steal into and out of a white man’s house.

 

The white folks figured the slaves must have been spirits because even their dogs could not track them. The white women of course were terrified. They were afraid to live!  They could hardly go to bed, or lay down or get up.  They were amazed the niggers hadn’t stolen any of their family. Why were they afraid of that? Because that is what they would have done!

 

She said, “I was just to that pass I didn’t have no reasoning faculties no more.” She was so scared for her children she locked them in their room. As she explained, “when you get scared that way, and it keeps running on, and getting worse and worse all the time, and your wits get to addling, and you get to doing all sorts of wild things.”

 

The people are of course entirely credulous, expecting the worst that is imaginable, because that is what they would do. They think the time for retribution is at hand. In a nation built on the twin original sins of black slavery and indigenous genocide such fears are as real as fears can be.

 

Dehumanizing

Classic Books, racism, religion

 

The first trick of the racist and the slave holder is to convince himself that the blacks are not fully human. Once we dehumanize someone, we can do anything to him or her. Dehumanization is the first step on the long journey to genocide, or slavery. And when one realizes the slave is actually human, as Huck  did, the long road to justice has begun.

Huck was astonished to learn from Jim that he missed his wife and children and longed for them. How was that possible? This was an epiphany for Huck. Miss Watson never learned that. She was prepared to sell Jim and his wife and children to different owners. As Huck said of Jim,

“he was low and homesick; because he hadn’t ever been away from home before in his life; and I do believe he cared just as much for his people as white folks does for their’n. It don’t seem natural, but I reckon it’s so.”

It was like when Huck was asked by his aunt, another good Christian woman, if anyone had been killed in the steamship accident, and Huck said no. Only a nigger was killed, and his aunt responded gratefully, “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.” Niggers are not people. They don’t count.

When Huck arrived at the plantation that was owned by Phelps, he learned the white children were just like the children of the adult slaves: “acting the same way the little niggers was going.”

Later Huck admits to Tom Sawyer that he helped nigger Jim to escape and he was ashamed of that saying, “it’s a lowdown business, but what if it is? I’m low down.”

Of course, it is not just conmen who are infused with unreality. So too is the “Sunday-like” small plantation owned by whites and filled with a family of black slaves.” Reality is forbidden to intrude there too. You can tell from Huck’s description of the plantation that he understands the reality of it. It deadens all who live there. Not just the slaves, but the slave owners too.

Here is the reality of the plantation: Niggers, it goes without saying, are not people. They don’t count. They’re suffering is not real. That is the reality of the plantation. And we learn it without a sermon, because a sermon is not necessary. We understand the reality of the plantation, even if nice people like the Phelps family did not. We learn that reality because we hear it from a magnificent story teller.

Here is the reality of the plantation:

His aunt asked Huck when he arrived and told about an accident on the river steamer:

“Goodness gracious! Anybody hurt?” Huck replies: “No’m. Killed a nigger.” Her quick response: “Well, it’s lucky; because sometimes people do get hurt.”

Niggers, it goes without saying, are not people. They don’t count. They’re suffering is not real. That is the reality of the plantation. And we learn it without a sermon, because a sermon is not necessary. We understand the reality of the plantation, even if nice people like the Phelps family did not.

We learn that reality because we hear it from a magnificent story teller—Mark Twain. He does it all without preaching about it.