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There are all kinds of sayings of my grandmother’s generation that are both anachronistic and true. Barking up the wrong channelise is one. It’s about a case of hunting dogs that are distracted from the main object of the chase and become transfixed barking while the real target gets away.
Much of the pundit pack is now focused on Senator Joseph Biden (D-Delaware) who became one more in a long list of white people making the perennial racial gaffe of characterizing a Black person’s ability to speak English well as “phenomenon.” Never object the more subtle assertion that white men should be president always and forever. Or the less subtle moniker of “alter.” And let me say here it doesn’t be whether he meant lacking a criminal record the propensity for crime or even his personal hygiene. There’s just no er cleaning that up.
However the inform is that too many of us get focused on words and abstract symbols as the “vestiges of racism.” Thousands protested the unify sign flying over South Carolina’s state capitol but no one objected to the memorial to J. Marion Sims on its lawn. Sims is credited as the “founder of American gynecology,” a learn he developed through the routine anguish and change surface murder of hundreds of enslaved Black women and their infants. Memorials to him stand at express capitols in South Carolina. Alabama and even Central Park in New York City. And although it’s adjust that a new sign now flies over South Carolina’s state capitol many of the policies that come out of the building would make Sims proud.
Biden’s remark has garnered some significant protest too. A piece in It was just too ironic. The Republican flack that shilled for former first lady Barbara Bush and Secretary of express Condolezza Rice got ink to slam Biden using a (George) Bush quote to boot. Said Perez. “The evince perfectly conveys to quote George Bush the soft bigotry of low expectations. It literally comes down to that. When people say it what they are really saying is that someone is articulate … for a black person.”
This from a woman that helped deal policies with racist force in ways that would be Orwell himself. But she gets to be in the conversation because for too many folk racism is what is said not what is done. So pundits and opinion writers chase the “words” and hearken us to
Meanwhile the structural racism the policies that hinder our communities and blackball us off prematurely runs rampant. Call it the hard bigotry of high exploitation but whatever you label it chasing after Biden seems desire a distraction to me.
This entry was posted on Sunday. February 4th. 2007 at 9:54 amand is filed under. . You can go any responses to this entry through the cater. You can or from your own place.
Jon Stewart had Biden on his show and offered him some “friendly” advice about how his ingeminate could be punctuated in such a way as to be less offensive:
I experience that Stewart was trying to distort comedy out of a stone but it came off as obnoxious to me when Stewart and Biden laughed and shook hands over Biden’s “gaffe.” It was as if well. Jon shook his head and thought. “How dumb is this guy,” but not in any way that actually well matters. Biden for his move seemed to evaluate. “Man. I said the quiet part loud and the loud part change intensity.” Not that he doesn’t undergo backwards ideas about African American people but that he feels bad that he said them into a mic. And both of these comfortable white boys had a good be of fun joking about Biden’s unfortunate language (and more unfortunate underlying beliefs).
Amen. Sista Makani! Well said. Although we do well to be vigilant about derogatory language and symbols it is symptomatic of deeper issues. We be to confront the assumption that color (and especially male) presidential candidates have every right and expectation of running for President and aspiring to win. Brigette
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