Sometime in the mid-1990s, I went through a mandatory two-day course of diversity training. The newspaper management required it for all editorial employees after concerted lobbying by African-Americans on the staff who complained of a lot of casual racism in the newsroom. Lord knows, they were right: there was a lot of casual racism. Sexism too.
But the diversity course was bizarre. I hope they don't still do it this way: The facilitators were true-believing leftists (ironically working to help corporations avoid being sued). They took it as their mission to convince everyone of the deep-seated oppression of minorities and women by American society, and the role that white males played in victimizing everyone else. This was done through various exercises in which we were asked to talk about our personal lives and encounters with people of different ethnic backgrounds from ourselves. Our anecdotes were then squeezed into this oppression narrative. The idea was to get white people to see it all from the other side -- or else. Some participants found the sharing to be alarming and inappropriate -- it was painful to watch them fumble through it. I had recently been covering Latin America, and pointed out that systemic oppression was significantly worse in, say, Guatemala, where you could be killed for your opinions, your ethnicity, or both.
I write this not to complain, but to note that this was basically an earlier iteration of the cycle of stupid that has captured the media this summer on the question of America and race.
Just as my diversity workshop tried to simplistically rig things one way (whites are oppressors, blacks are victims) Andrew Brietbart and others on the right are trying to rig things the other way (blacks are oppressors, whites are victims). It's a mirror image of the left's "oppression narrative" -- only without actual oppression.
Recently, I got into a brief Twitter exchange with a conservative who was outraged over the New Black Panthers case and the notion that the Obama administration might not be going down the middle, prosecuting blacks suppressing the white vote with a fervor equal to that it displays when the races are reversed. It was brief because it was a ridiculous conversation. He seemed unaware that there is, historically and statistically speaking, no black suppression of white voters in the United States. It is simply not a problem. Even the NBP case dealt with a brief incident in a majority black district; no white voter has come forward to complain of being scared away from the polls. Suppressing the black vote, on the other hand, has a long and ugly history and is still not unheard of.
In the same way, the case of Shirley Sherrod, advanced by the irresponsible Breitbart as a case of racism, illustrates the opposite: it is the story of an African-American who overcame her own prejudices and difficult personal history and helped people different from her.
The problem with the diversity workshop was ultimately in its attempt to compel people to change their thinking. The notion that your employer could do that, or attempt to, is repellent. What's going on now has even less to do with race relations. And, like back then, everything to do with power.
Just as those true-believing facilitators wielded power conferred by a corporation to pound ideas into our heads, the right is using its media echo chamber to settle scores and reinforce its own "oppression narrative" in which black racism is a major national problem, and in which racism is not measured by material facts, but by what's allegedly in your head. Here's what Breitbart told TPM even after it came out that his Sherrod video clip, in context, conveyed the opposite of his original claim: "I think the video speaks for itself. The way she's talking about white people ... is conveying a present tense racism in my opinion. But racism is in the eye of the beholder."
The good news here is that these faux-scandals are so thin on substance and so short-lived that few Americans are going to notice. They have the feel of late-stage culture warfare, in which the original sources of outrage and grievance have dried up. So the warriors must search for, and manufacture, more.
This post first appeared on my True/Slant blog.
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Willie Nelson: Shirley Sherrod, a Family Farmer's Friend
The real story of Shirley Sherrod deserved to be told a long time ago. She has had an amazing impact on the lives and livelihoods of hundreds of families and communities throughout the South.
Bob Cesca: Fooled Again by Breitbart and the Wingnut Right
Andrew Breitbart has done it again. This time, he's flimflammed the White House, the NAACP and the traditional news media. I wonder who will be fired and disgraced next.
Breitbart is the primary agent of the true scandal: publishing a deceptively edited video with the express purposes of inflicting damage on the NAACP and the current administration, and to move the debate away from racism within the Tea Party.
Deception and diversion. GOP tactics. Jig's up.
The additional “arguments” you raise are similarly irrelevant and do nothing to mitigate the egregious violations of the law committed by the members of the NBPP or diminish the appalling action taken by the DOJ to ensure that they faced no civil or criminal repercussions whatsoever. (cont)
You accuse the right of reinforcing its "oppression narrative" in which "racism is not measured by material facts," yet your entire argument that the NBPP case is a "faux scandal" rests upon your own omission of material facts and a truly embarrassing ignorance and/or intentional misapprehension of the applicable law. (cont)
From the unsupportable 'WORLD FAMOUS', when attached to 'PIE' , to politicians pledging their commitment to peace, Americans drown in a sea of lies. In the PR world, the oil world, the banking world, the retail world - with the tiny 'up to' modifying a huge 70% OFF - even in church it's lies, lies, lie. It's lies to make money, lies to get elected. We breath air polluted by major and minor departures from the truth. We inhale lies, exhale lies.
There's a price to pay for that profound lack of virtue and it is the loss of the hope for positive change. You can't change what you've lost the ability to recognize, whether in yourself, or your society.
Now, speaking about hope, speaking about the disgraceful lack of the honest decent impulse in the Obama government, when you're first reflex is political expedience rather than immediately righting a horrible wrong - IE: YOU fired a virtuous woman - you're hopeless; And those who vote for you
I agree with each of these statements separately, but I think the reason it's "not personal" is that the 'perpetrators' don't see their victims (or, to be more charitable, targets) as persons. In a way, people like Shirley Sharrod from the POV of the Breitbarts and Limbaughs of the world are more like avatars in a video game than actual human beings with real lives, experiences, histories, concerns, etc. More importantly, though, they are avatars for any one of the various pluralizations that the right wing hates, resents, distrusts, opposes, or has decided is a threat to civilization this week. Democrats, liberals, progressives, blacks, the NAACP, ACORN, immigrants, Muslims, gays, etc., etc. For people like this it's always "them," not "him" or "her" (with some exceptions, e.g., Obama, Pelosi, George Soros, et al., and even those individuals are thought of more as a 'them' than as real people).
A person does not have to trouble his conscience with the consequences of his words and actions when those are directed at an amorphous, collective "them." Note that Breitbart claimed his target was the NAACP, not Ms. Sharrod; "them," not -her-.
First, mom is a moving breast that you feel a need to control. Babies are often enraged when the breast is not automatically where they want it to be, just as they are sometimes terrified when they turn their heads and mom disappears. That's how the human journey begins.
'm hardly the first to recognize that becoming psychologically adult involves letting go of the symbols of your parents as gods or devils, and accepting them as separate humans who love you, albeit with faults and virtues. It's obvious that in our society many people never reach this milestone. (Not true of all other societies.)
The virtues, such as delineated in the Ten Commandments, are there to help us with this problem. I'm not talking religion here but, at bottom, what's morally utilitarian to our happiness, such as kindness, generosity, humility, courage, honesty.
Personally, I Iink the epidemic of infantilism to the dysfunctional cowboy capitalism of our time. On the other hand, I'd say when the Bolsheviks murdered the innocent members of the Tzar's family, they lost their souls and the possibility to realize their dream to create a better world.
Yeah, like the when liberals condemn all "teabaggers" as racists and call their protests "klan rallies" with absolutely no evidence whatsoever to back it up. Liberals see anyone who would dare to oppose Obama's policies as "more like avatars in a video game than actual human beings with real lives, experiences, histories, concerns, etc."
From the unsupportable 'WORLD FAMOUS', when attached to 'PIE' , to politicians pledging their commitment to peace, Americans drown in a sea of lies. In the PR world, the oil world, the banking world, the retail world - with the tiny 'up to' modifying a huge 70% OFF - even in church it's lies, lies, lie. It's lies to make money, lies to get elected. We breath air polluted by major and minor departures from the truth. We inhale lies, exhale lies.
There's a price to pay for that profound lack of virtue and it is the loss of the hope for positive change. You can't change what you've lost the ability to recognize, whether in yourself, or your society.
Now, speaking about hope, speaking about the disgraceful lack of the honest decent impulse in the Obama government, when you're first reflex is political expedience rather than immediately righting a horrible wrong - IE: YOU fired a virtuous woman - you're hopeless; And those who vote for you
It's hard to describe the GOP/TP/Fox/Rush/&c. narrative any other way. Point to the "government," the President, minorities, immigrants, Muslims, the poor, the GLBT community, or whomever else, and cry, "THEY want to take away/are taking away your _______ !!!! They want you to ______ !!!! They hate your ______ !!!" The 'they' may vary from day to day, as may the _____, but the basic narrative is the same: "They" are taking what is rightfully yours.
Is it any wonder that anyone can actually believe that, broadly speaking, white people are often, or always, victims of non-white racism?
a. black people, "they want revenge"
b. brown people coming from South of the Border, they will rob you
c. Muslims, well you know
All nonsense to most of us. But fear is a strong driver for the low information 'merican.
b. they are robbing you every day.
c. only the foreign ones, apparently.
The Tea Party right and the DKOS / Huff Po left are mirror images of each other.
You are correct about ........
Type- antitype, thesis- antithesis, Diametricly opposed.
You would be foolish to assume that doctrinaire leftists are " low informational ", it's been my experience that they are some of the most intelligent, highly educated citizens of America. Underestimating your opponent is not good policy, weather left or right.
Both sides use half truth, bias in viewpoint, selective reporting, and plausible deniability in presenting data, truth be told. Neither side is innocent and the only victims are those who walk around with idealogical blinders on. Rare indeed is the one who stands upon the middle line, defending truth, expounding to clarify, and neutral to ideology, there is such a fine line to what is true, that it could be said such a rarity does not exist. If such a person were to exist, my suggestion would be to clone him/her 536 times.
Additionally, even where truth and right knowledge exist about an issue does not necessarily indicate resolution of the issue. Having wisdom is only half the battle, following throughout with it the arduous part.
Really? Why don't you pass on that "good news" to Mrs. Sherrod and her family, eh?
Your contention that your corporate diversity training was "basically an earlier iteration" of Breitbart's latest attempt to "rig" the race narrative is unflatteringly shallow, Mr. McQuaid. You answer why yourself with your own statement: "It's a mirror image of the left's "oppression narrative" -- only without actual oppression."
Yep. No actual oppression in this right-wing "oppression narrative" .... EXCEPT for the victimization of Mrs. Sherrod, her family, and the millions of Americans who were jerked around for 48 hours by Breitbart's and FOX News's blatantly deceptive political manipulation of a troubling cultural issue.
Breitbart, FOX News, and the extended family of right-wing political operatives are relentlessly trying to inflict damage on the current administration and the Democratic party, and they don't care who or what is collateral damage, including the economic recovery of our country. This cynical and destructive political strategy is indeed oppression, and shouldn't be dismissed so lightly as "faux-scandals."
The media in this country should be ashamed of themselves.
The main take away was the plea from the African Americans present, that we whites stop talking *to them* about race relations and all our efforts to change our upbringing or whatever, and instead could we please talk honestly to *each other* about our racism?
They felt the conversation that needed to happen was not one between African Americans and whites but between the ones with the privilege--the white folks. And not just any conversation--but a real honest inventory and confrontation.
They were sick and tired of convincing us about our blind spot attitudes and wanted us once and for to talk responsibility for it and for changing each other.
It never happened, but I wish it had.
However, more and more I do see people understanding the true nature of the manipulators and especially the Fox Borderline machine. I am heartened by what I see. I think above all else, Rachel Maddow is the reason for conservative consternation. She is soooo good.