feminist blogs

The next time you’re in a situation where a person says something racist and then says “But I’m not racist why would you say I’m racist?” don’t even bother trying to talk them down from the failtree. Just point them at this clip from VH1’s Bad Girl’s Club and walk away for a little while. If they don’t see where they’re going wrong after watching this classic, yet unbelievably insane trainwreck of human interaction, you might not be able to reach them just now.

Hat Tip To Blame: sparkeymonster

Constructive Ways Of Administering The Cluebat -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman

…without getting into the whole question of whether the term antisemitism should apply only to Jews and without the complicating factor that not all Muslims are Semitic. Why? Because if you replace the word Muslim with the word Jew in what this man says and alter the historical references appropriately, he would be speaking–intelligently, articulately, with good humor and a controlled potentially persuasive anger; which is what is most frightening to me–some of the most pernicious of classical antisemitic tropes. And so I wish I could use the term antisemitism, not to make this about the Jews, or even to conjure Jew-hatred, but because I wish I had a word, a single, powerful word that would capture the xenophobic, racist, essentializing, religious hatred of Muslims that this man is espousing. Muslim-bashing doesn’t do it for me because Muslim-bashing captures neither the tone nor the intelligence with which the man speaks.

My own understanding is that the building at ground zero that the Muslim organizations have proposed is going to be a community center that includes a space for prayer–which is very different from building a mosque. Now, whether or not it is appropriate to have any religion-specific building at ground zero, community center or otherwise, seems to me a legitimate question, but even if this man’s description of the proposed building as a mosque were accurate–and, come on, a 13-story mosque? That just doesn’t make sense–his argument is not about the building per se; his argument, which sounds an awful lot like the argument in books like The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is about asserting that Muslims have an agenda of world-domination. Watching it sent chills down my spine, because I am very aware of the kind of violence and oppression that this kind of rhetoric can lead to, and I say that not as a cloaked reference to the Holocaust, or to any other instances of the oppression of the Jews specifically, but as a reference to the ways that all oppressors fashion an intellectual justification–and thereby create an intellectual history that cannot be erased–for the oppressions that they prosecute.

Cross posted on It’s All Connected.

The recent incident with the Arizona elementary school mural and the city councilman who hated it with his racist, racist ways got me to thinking about how it always feels to me that no matter how many minds I change via this blog or through personal interactions, it still may not be enough. There are too many people who are mired in their mindset and never have it challenged because of where they live, or who they associate with, or whatever. It might be possible to write those people off except they have children, and they teach those children either directly or by example. And the cycle continues.

So how do you combat this? One of my thoughts was that if we could teach young people about the concepts we discuss here — privilege, unpacking the knapsack, the different levels and manifestations of prejudice, bias, and bigotry — could we give them the tools to combat them or, at least, change on an individual level?

I know such efforts occur on a college level. I have a piece in a book about key debates around race (though I’m not sure when that book is coming out). Though I wonder if this is too late? Or even enough?

Kids in elementary school deal with or perpetuate bias, so shouldn’t we start with them? Of course, kids that young might not be able to fully grasp concepts of privilege (adults seem to have a hard time). What I envision is a multi-step, multi-grade curriculum designed to teach different aspects of anti-prejudice thinking and behavior appropriate to the age level. Elementary, middle school, high school, then college. You’d have two tracks — one for kids who progress from one level to the next, starting in elementary, one for kids in middle and high school who get these lessons for the first time. As far as college goes, I think every school needs to have a mandatory freshman class on Understanding the Other.

This learning scheme will not only be about race but also gender as well. And higher level materials will also include sexual orientation, class, religion, and more. And there should be discussions and lessons for kids who are likely to be the target of prejudice on how to deal with it effectively. I would also love to see materials for kids of color that specifically deals with intra-POC relations. because it’s not as if there aren’t issues there, too.

There are three aspects to this curriculum that I see as key.

1. Books. We need different ones for each learning level as well as teacher materials and activities. While my choice would be for each child to have a book they can keep, it might be more effective to aim for each school getting books they can re-use.
2. An online component. Since there are always new essays, blog posts, and amazing discussions online, there should be a repository for links or full text that teachers and students can also access. This way the books won’t have to be updated as often, but the curriculum can remain fresh. I feel a wiki would be the most useful in this regard, as that would make it easy to categorize posts, articles, and essays and make interconnections between them.
3. Independent teachers. As much as I would wish that existing teacher could implement this curriculum, I know this would not always be the case. For many schools, it might be more useful if outside teachers came in and taught during one class period — perhaps for the one devoted to social studies? — for one week twice a year. Obviously the optimal situation would be throughout the year and all the time. But you have to start somewhere. The teachers wouldn’t have to be full-time in this case. Professionals who get the training necessary and could take a week off from their job or part of the day for a week to teach. I expect this would work best in any area where the program is just getting started.

To get started on something like this one would, of course, need money. We’ll need folks to come in and help design the curriculum for each age level, we’ll need folks to write, design, and print the books and materials, we’ll need teachers. And since all the news I hear about public schools is how people keep taking their money away, I assume that the best strategy for getting this into schools is to offer it at no cost. So, privately funded.

The whole time I was thinking about this, I was sure that I can’t have ever been the only one with this idea. And someone must have implemented it somewhere. i’d love to know, if anyone out there is aware of such things. I’d also like to know how they pulled it off, what the results have been for the kids.

This idea and the structure I’ve envisioned may not be perfect or exactly right. But it’s an open source idea. Build on it, improve it, whatever. What I want the most is for people to get together and make it happen. How? I am not even sure. I’m willing to have someone tell me. Or even just to go out and do it. I don’t need to spearhead.

Thoughts?

And now a word from our sponsor...

Your ad could be here, right now.

Read the whole thing, but here are some highlights:

That bringing up racism (even with copious documentation) is far from an effective “card” to play in order to garner sympathy, is evidenced by the way in which few people even become aware of the studies confirming its existence. How many Americans do you figure have even heard, for example, that black youth arrested for drug possession for the first time are incarcerated at a rate that is forty-eight times greater than the rate for white youth, even when all other factors surrounding the crime are identical (4)?

How many have heard that persons with “white sounding names,” according to a massive national study, are fifty percent more likely to be called back for a job interview than those with “black sounding” names, even when all other credentials are the same (5)?

How many know that white men with a criminal record are slightly more likely to be called back for a job interview than black men without one, even when the men are equally qualified, and present themselves to potential employers in an identical fashion (6)?

How many have heard that according to the Justice Department, Black and Latino males are three times more likely than white males to have their vehicles stopped and searched by police, even though white males are over four times more likely to have illegal contraband in our cars on the occasions when we are searched (7)?

How many are aware that black and Latino students are about half as likely as whites to be placed in advanced or honors classes in school, and twice as likely to be placed in remedial classes? Or that even when test scores and prior performance would justify higher placement, students of color are far less likely to be placed in honors classes (8)? Or that students of color are 2-3 times more likely than whites to be suspended or expelled from school, even though rates of serious school rule infractions do not differ to any significant degree between racial groups (9)?

Fact is, few folks have heard any of these things before, suggesting how little impact scholarly research on the subject of racism has had on the general public, and how difficult it is to make whites, in particular, give the subject a second thought.

Perhaps this is why, contrary to popular belief, research indicates that people of color are actually reluctant to allege racism, be it on the job, or in schools, or anywhere else. Far from “playing the race card” at the drop of a hat, it is actually the case (again, according to scholarly investigation, as opposed to the conventional wisdom of the white public), that black and brown folks typically “stuff” their experiences with discrimination and racism, only making an allegation of such treatment after many, many incidents have transpired, about which they said nothing for fear of being ignored or attacked (10). Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias, rather than exaggerate them. Again, when it comes to playing a race card, it is more accurate to say that whites are the dealers with the loaded decks, shooting down any evidence of racism as little more than the fantasies of unhinged blacks, unwilling to take personal responsibility for their own problems in life.

and

what does it say about white rationality and white collective sanity, that in 1963–at a time when in retrospect all would agree racism was rampant in the United States, and before the passage of modern civil rights legislation–nearly two-thirds of whites, when polled, said they believed blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities–almost the same number as say this now, some forty-plus years later? What does it suggest about the extent of white folks’ disconnection from the real world, that in 1962, eighty-five percent of whites said black children had just as good a chance as white children to get a good education in their communities (12)? Or that in May, 1968, seventy percent of whites said that blacks were treated the same as whites in their communities, while only seventeen percent said blacks were treated “not very well” and only 3.5 percent said blacks were treated badly? (13)?

What does it say about white folks’ historic commitment to equal opportunity–and which Taranto would have us believe has only been rendered inoperative because of affirmative action–that in 1963, three-fourths of white Americans told Newsweek, “The Negro is moving too fast” in his demands for equality (14)? Or that in October 1964, nearly two-thirds of whites said that the Civil Rights Act should be enforced gradually, with an emphasis on persuading employers not to discriminate, as opposed to forcing compliance with equal opportunity requirements (15)?

What does it say about whites’ tenuous grip on mental health that in mid-August 1969, forty-four percent of whites told a Newsweek/Gallup National Opinion Survey that blacks had a better chance than they did to get a good paying job–two times as many as said they would have a worse chance? Or that forty-two percent said blacks had a better chance for a good education than whites, while only seventeen percent said they would have a worse opportunity for a good education, and eighty percent saying blacks would have an equal or better chance? In that same survey, seventy percent said blacks could have improved conditions in the “slums” if they had wanted to, and were more than twice as likely to blame blacks themselves, as opposed to discrimination, for high unemployment in the black community (16).

In other words, even when racism was, by virtually all accounts (looking backward in time), institutionalized, white folks were convinced there was no real problem. Indeed, even forty years ago, whites were more likely to think that blacks had better opportunities, than to believe the opposite (and obviously accurate) thing: namely, that whites were advantaged in every realm of American life.

I’ve been meaning to post about the police shooting of seven-year-old Aiyana Jones. Rad Geek says just about what I would have said:

All that said, it really doesn’t matter what the video shows, or doesn’t. If the cops burned a little girl to hell with an incendiary grenade and then shot her in the neck, “accidentally,” while storming into a house they had no reason and no right to be in, in order to serve a warrant for a man who wasn’t there, because they couldn’t be bothered to exercise the caution necessary to pick the right unit of the duplex, or to work out some way of catching a suspect whose location they already knew other than a hyperviolent middle-of-the-night paramilitary raid, then they still fucking murdered that little girl. They introduced violence into the situation; they chose a hyperviolent confrontational method which they knew would be endangering the lives of a house full of completely innocent people; if you or I stormed two different apartments on the theory that a dangerous man might be in one of them, hurled explosives, ran around with guns drawn, and we “accidentally” killed a child in the process, then you or I would be locked up immediately, indicted shortly thereafter, and thrown in prison for years.

Racewire points out that both the police department and the officer who apparently shot Aiyana (he claims that the girl’s grandmother grabbed his gun and it went off) have a history.

From Bitch, PhD:

I want all of us to think about how often these ‘accidents’ happen.
I want all of us to think about where these ‘accidents’ happen.

Because they aren’t happening in New Trier.
They aren’t happening in Westwood.

Then I want you to think about those to whom these ‘accidents’ occur.

If well-off white people were the frequent victims of no-knock SWAT tactics, those tactics would have been made illegal — or at least, massively restricted — ages ago. But because the victims are generally poor and not white, everyone acts like it’s acceptable that the police can routinely wake people up by tossing a stun grenade through their window.

From Juell at Racewire:

Detroit Mayor Dave Bing calls on residents to come together to address the violent crimes happening in their communities. He fails to acknowledge the fact that the very same people who are entrusted to protect citizens against these crimes are the ones that continue to slay people with few repercussions. We can look for answers all we want, and we still won’t find them. The reality is that this sort of violence is bound to happen again unless there is real, enforceable accountability in place to discipline officers who engage in misconduct. The cycle of violence is inevitable when violence is condoned and institutionalized.

What can we do in response to Aiyana Jones and the militarized police presence that plagues Black and brown communities throughout the United States? Adrienne Brown offers some suggestions:

we have to fundamentally shift the way we participate in our lives and in the creation of our local economies and societies. we have to demand that police fundamentally shift how they are allowed to function in our communities - they must be disarmed, we must demand they focus their training on the humanity of communities, unlearning these tactics of creating devastation from a safe distance.

We need not only to come together to demand justice for this latest atrocity. We must also acknowledge that until there is broad, systemic change to the way our neighborhoods are policed, we’ll continue to mourn our brothers and sisters.

One of the issues that ended my flirtation with libertarianism was civil rights.

The history of Jim Crow laws certainly worked to oppress African-American men and women in the South. But segregation was not simply a matter of law. It was also a matter of informal agreement among the white community in the South. No law was needed to keep a particular lunch counter segregated, other than the store’s policy. The general libertarian attitude that a business owner could keep people out of their business for any — or no — reason supported the system of segregation.

But of course, discrimination went further than that. Basic libertarian principles say that if I own a company, and I want to keep it lily-white and all-male, then I can. No blacks, no women, no Irish need apply. In the utopia that is libertarianism, the magic of the market will take care of any business that wants to discriminate. But in reality, where whites held more political and economic power, the truth was that businesses that discriminated were indeed “taken care of” by the continued investment and patronage of white racists.

And so the various civil rights acts had to happen, using the power of the state to undo the damage wrought by centuries of abuse. And although we are still far from being a truly egalitarian society, civil rights laws and government support of integration have ended the day when a man could be legally denied an equal shot because of the color of his skin, or a woman could be legally denied an equal shot because of her genitalia.¹

It was an undeniable good. And it was something that would not have happened had the Eisenhower and Kennedy and Johnson administrations hewed to a libertarian philosophy. And the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that while the philosophy of libertarianism had some important things to say about liberty, its real-world application was limited.

But some people never had this epiphany. Take Rand Paul, currently the Republican nominee for U.S. Senate out of Kentucky. Paul, as you may know, came out against the Americans for Disabilities Act the other day. And of course he did. Making accommodations for those who are in some way disabled costs money. Wheelchair ramps don’t make themselves. And so of course Paul thinks it’s okay to allow business to decide whether they want someone who’s blind to be able to navigate their store, or someone who can’t walk to enter their store.

But Paul is not just supporting business on the right to discriminate against the non-able bodied. He’s perfectly okay with making life hard for those who aren’t white — as long as it’s only business, not government, making the difficulties. Three times in an interview with NPR, Paul punted on the question of whether he’d support the Civil Rights Acts. But he was crystal clear in an interview with the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Paul explained that he backed the portion of the Civil Rights Act banning discrimination in public places and institutions, but that he thinks private businesses should be permitted to discriminate by race.

“I like the Civil Rights Act in the sense that it ended discrimination in all public domains, and I’m all in favor of that,” he said. “I don’t like the idea of teling private business owners….”

In short, if your state government wants to put in whites-only bathrooms, that should be against the law. But if, say, Kaiser Permanente wants to open a series of whites-only hospitals, that should be perfectly legal, at least in the mind of Paul.

Note that this is not a case of Rand Paul being particularly racist. It’s a case of him embracing, wholeheartedly, the idea at the core of libertarianism, that only government can restrict liberty. That only government can practice discrimination. That only government can be the problem.

But the brave men and women who staged sit-ins at whites-only lunch counters weren’t just doing so to end government-led discrimination. They were doing it to get the business owners to open up their lunch counters, as well. I’m grateful that we live in a country where their actions were not in vain, and where their cause was eventually, if grudgingly, supported by the very government that had spent centuries working against them.

Rand Paul is not. A majority of Kentucky Republicans, evidently, are not. In November, we’ll see if the residents of Kentucky are, or are not.

UPDATE: Oh, goody! Rachel Maddow owns Rand.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Toward the end, Paul complains that the whole argument over the Civil Rights Act is a “red herring.” But it isn’t. Paul’s worldview — the libertarian, anti-government worldview — is that government can never be the solution. That government action is — always — the problem. That the wisdom of the market cures all.

But that’s not always the case. Sometimes business is the problem. Sometimes the people are the problem. Sometimes the government is the solution. Not always. But sometimes.

Someone who believes government can never be the solution is flatly wrong. And the Civil Rights Act — like Medicare, like Social Security — is proof of that. Rand Paul’s view of the Civil Rights Act, and his willful blindness to government’s role in righting a wrong that needed righting, is the very reason why he is unfit for office. It isn’t a red herring. It’s the whole enchilada.

1. Unless, of course, she is transgender.

TRIGGER WARNING

NO VICTIM BLAMING IN THE COMMENTS OR YOU WILL BE BANNED. WITH EXTREME PREJUDICE. AND MALICE AFORETHOUGHT. I HAVE. NO. PATIENCE. PERIOD. you have been warned.

Because you cannot trust them. No really.

Of course, not all of them do that. But how do you know that your cop won’t?

And even when you get a good cop, the system and society itself is really, really, really really, fucked.

And then to top it off, POC face the extra burden of cops deciding to frame men of color instead of investigating to find out the real rapist. (And do not even BEGIN to think that you can use that last sentence to start propagandizing about how all women are liars and how all rape cases are made up etc. I will delete your comment and ban your ass so fast your head will spin. Just go read this: The Duke Lacrosse Case: Exploiting the issue of false rape accusations Thanks Alas a Blog). The point of the comment is that race and class sometimes intersect in the criminal justice system so that instead of properly investigating crimes, the police will go after vulnerable populations because it is easier.)

I have not even begun to consider the maelstrom that is domestic violence and abuse. Nor have I begun to look at stalking. Or street harassment. Never mind  the subject  of how state violence intertwines with and perpetuates violence between individuals.

To say nothing of the truly complex and so important issues when class and race and disability and various sexualities and whatever else intersect. Think the police response to transwomen of color who have been raped and beaten and killed by boyfriends and sometimes the police themselves. Think the police response to undocumented gay immigrants, or simply heterosexual partners, being abused. Think police response to poor POC vis a vis rich white women. Think police reaction to poor white gays survivors of domestic violence and rape, never mind POC survivors of domestic violence and rape. Think police response to disabled people who might be communicating though American sign language, or be blind, or mentally disabled. Think about religion fer instance. Howe might police respond to Muslim couples, what with the widespread prejudice in America now? And exactly WHEN is the federal gov’t going to fix the total fuckery that has made Native American women among the most battered and raped community in the United States? If police pay little attention to rape, how much do they pay to street harassment? And those threatening behaviors that are not illegal, like forcing someone to stay in a room and watch sex acts? And what happens when domestic violence and rape touch down in the middle of activists fighting the prison and police industrial complex? Call the police? Really? And what about sex workers Never mind sex workers who happen to be transgender? Hell trans people when murdered are regularly assumed to be sex workers even when they are not, and this is one more brick that is used against them. And then we have male POC survivors. Exactly how many of those, having been on the butt-end of police racially profiling them, immigrant raids and all the other manners of BS, are going to overcome that, plus societal pressures that say that men do not get rape because they always want sex, men don’t get beaten up because they are stronger than women, all of this; to report domestic violence and rape to the police? Precisely how do you think the police would respond?

See also :Types of Sexual Assault and Biblical Battered Wife Syndrome: Christian Women and Domestic Violence

And i can’t remember if I linked this and I am too tired to look through that thicket in html We Are the Dead: Sex, Assault, and Trans Women

*sigh* I am tired but I know I have missed stuff. So drop links and debate in the comments but again I warn you that victim blaming of any sort will result in comments being deleted and me resorting to banning if you insist on being an asshole.

And now a word from our sponsor...

Your ad could be here, right now.

Read the whole thing.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama…

In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?

To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark “other” does so, however, it isn’t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and “American-ness” of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.

And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.

Really, read the whole thing.

–

*Title changed; see comments.

ETA: This post was originally made on facebook where it’s backed up by links. There are probably reasons to prefer this version to the one I linked. Either way, though, it’s an excellent essay.

Back in January, Nojojojo made a post on her livejournal that I found insightful. I asked her for permission to share it with Alas readers which she granted–and I apologize for not getting to it before now.

Nojojojo quotes Melissa Harris Lacewell’s review of Jonathan Metzl’s Protest Psychosis at The Nation. Here’s the telling quote she selected:

At the turn of the 20th century schizophrenia was a diagnosis typically given to middle-class, white women whose behavior was deemed embarrassing, distressing, and inappropriate by their husbands and families. This disease of the double-mind was often attributed to white, intellectual geniuses as well. (Think of the popular book and film A Beautiful Mind) Throughout the first half of the 20th century, medical professionals diagnosed white patients as schizophrenic and typically described these patients as docile, non-threatening, and in need of therapuetic nurturing.

A dramatic change occured in the 1960s. During this era schizophrenia was increasingly diagnosed in “Negro men.” As black men were more firmly associated with the disease, psychiatric communities and popular culture came to understand schizophrenia as a disease marked by violence, hostility, aggression, and requiring powerful psychotropic medication.

Metzl draws his book title from a 1968 article in the Archives of General Psychiatry where leading physicians describe “protest psychosis” as a condition where black men develop hostility, aggression, and delusional anti-whiteness after listening to Malcolm X, joining the black Muslims, or engaging in Civil Rights protests. In short, when African Americans experienced anger, distress, and disillusionment when faced with the crushing realities of Jim Crow and second-class citizenship, the medical establishment labeled them crazy and dangerous.

In the 1850s slaves seeking freedom were described as mad. In the 1920s women unwilling to conform to the constraints of domesticity were treated as insane. In the 1970s black people who wanted equality were thought to be nuts.

In comments, user squirrel_monkey adds, “”Sluggish schizophrenia” was also a common diagnosis in punitive psychiatry of the USSR, associated with ‘delusions of reformism’ — that is, to criticize the state was to be crazy by definition.”

It’s not that schizophrenia doesn’t describe something real, or that psychiatry can’t help people–as Nojojojo says in comments, “I did not mean to imply that there was no such thing as schizophrenia; I’m honestly not sure why some folks seem to have read that in the OP, but just wanted to clarify. I’m fully aware that schizophrenia is a real, organic, genetically-linked disorder. People who have it can live a normal life if they’re diagnosed and treated properly; I get all that.” But she’s “also well aware that the mental health profession (psychology, psychiatry, social work, etc) is like any other profession whose main tool of expression is people; people often impose their own biases on the interpretation of facts. What I found intriguing about the article was that the same biases affected interpretations of the same groups’ behavior in the same ways across history. It seemed like an especially blatant illustration of the systemic effects of racism, sexism, etc.”

Dissidence seems to be one of the important etceteras.

Before I begin this post, let me apologize for the editorial cartoon that I am posting in it. This post is about the cartoon, and so the image must be posted; that said, I am so disgusted by the image that I am uncomfortable putting it ahead of this disclaimer.

Quite simply, this political cartoon is vile. It is racist. It is sexist. It may be triggering. It is indefensible. And it is everything that is wrong with the right today. I am sorry I am showing it to you, but I think that it needs to be distributed. People need to actually see what passes for discussion on the right — and why the plaintive pleas that the tea party movement is totally not racist are, flatly, lies.

All right. Here is the image. If you do not wish to see it, please, click away now.

For the image viewing impaired, a description: Lady Liberty sits on a bed in the background, half-dressed, apparently having been raped. In the foreground, Barack Obama pulls a shirt on, and says, “Oh, shut up and stop your whining. You gave all the consent I’ll ever need Nov 2008. [sic] Get yourself cleaned up. I’ll be back — CapNTrade, Immigration, whatever. And I’ll bring ‘friends.’”

This political cartoon by Darleen Click appeared on the website Protein Wisdom — a long-standing cesspool of the right. Obama, of course, is depicted as a rapist, having defiled America by forcing health care on us — and now, he’s threatening to come back to gang-rape America some more.

The image is troubling on two fronts. First, portraying Obama as a rapist is playing on a trope as old as slavery — that African American men are lying in wait to defile good, white women. Lynching became acceptable in the South because it was done in “defense” of whites who wanted to keep their race “pure.” The myth of black sexual aggression and the poor white women who were forced to live in fear of it has been passed down from generation to generation — and it still endures to this day, though we’ve stopped lynching and instead moved on to telling women not to go out alone in the “bad” part of town.

There is, quite simply, no way to portray Obama as a rapist that does not play into this trope; just like drawing Obama as a chimpanzee, the image is ipso facto racist; nobody with the slightest understanding of the troubled history of American race relations would even consider drawing it without understanding that.

The fact that you and I understand this, of course, makes us the real racists; Click herself thinks she was totally justified. In a postscript to the cartoon, she lashes out at critics:

Oh I know I’m going to get called names on this. But I’m not going to play that game anymore. Like the sign at one of the TEA parties that said “it doesn’t matter what this sign says, you going to call it racist anyway.” When even the lawsuits now being brought by 30 plus state AG’s is considered racist, it is time to stop playing that game.

[...]

Heck, I want to shake them up. This is supposed to be a post-racial era? Then deal with the fact that the President of the United States is the head of a gang that just raped our American principles.

I made it a cartoon and not a photoshop and the “woman” is green. Deal, people.

This is not, of course, a post-racial era; only conservatives would think it was. But the idea that Liberty Enlightening the World is a racially neutral figure is absurd. And frankly, even if the Franco-American statue can somehow be depicted as non-white, it doesn’t change the fact that the trope of African American male sexual aggression is about the oppression of African American males¹ far more than the victims they purportedly choose.

So the portrayal of Obama as the leader of a gang of rapists is offensive enough. What’s equally offensive, however, is something Click never even bothers to mention in her defensive diatribe — the fact that the cartoon is also offensive to anyone who’s been a victim of sexual assault.

I have, thankfully, never been a victim of sexual assault, but I’ve met my share of survivors, read their stories and done my best, as a compassionate human, to understand what the attacks have done to them, and to work as an ally to make sure that I stand against those who would minimize those attacks.

I cannot speak for anyone who’s suffered through the process of dealing with assault, but I’ve yet to see anyone who’s dealt first-hand with the issue see it as a metaphor to be drug out to describe political events. It’s far too personal for that. It’s like describing a zoning decision as a Holocaust — it’s just too big to be a metaphor.

Using something like health care reform to claim that Obama is raping America is simply ignoring what rape really is. Hell, George W. Bush tortured people and sought to extrajudicially wire-tap Americans — acts far less in keeping with the spirit of American democracy than adding health coverage — and I wouldn’t use the word rape to describe those actions, because damn it, I don’t have the right to.

Click doesn’t even note this, of course — she simply portrays America as a woman who’s been raped, and is going to be gang-raped, and can do nothing about it.

There is far more to pick apart in this cartoon than I can; SEK at Lawyers, Guns & Money noted that it’s deeply ironic that Obama is evidently planning to rape the Statue of Liberty with immigration reform, and I can’t disagree there. And I haven’t even commented on the drawing as an aesthetic piece; I believe it could best be described as “horrible.”

But compared to the graver sins of the piece — vile racism and blatant sexism — they pale. Darleen Click has managed to, in a short cartoon, prove once again that the tea party types are exactly who we thought they were.

1. Of course, it’s also about deep-seated white guilt over the rape of African American women; the history of that is well-documented, and includes American figures from Thomas Jefferson to Strom Thurmond.