Peter Trumbore: Observations/Research/Diversions

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Wait, what?

September 2, 2015 By Pete Trumbore

Taylor Swift, glamorizing colonialism, with lion.
Taylor Swift, glamorizing colonialism, with lion.

 

In the category of Controversies I Never Thought Could Exist, I give you Taylor Swift as glamorizer and apologist for White European colonialism in Africa. Or, as the Guardian’s headline put it:

Taylor Swift accused of racism in ‘African colonial fantasy’ video

The fuss centers on the video for Swift’s new single, “Wildest Dreams,” in which the singer plays an actress falling for her hunky co-star

Critics are shocked that,

Taylor Swift, her record label and her video production group would think it was OK to film a video that presents a glamorous version of the white colonial fantasy of Africa.

Here are some facts for Swift and her team: Colonialism was neither romantic nor beautiful. It was exploitative and brutal. The legacy of colonialism still lives quite loudly to this day.

Yes, yes, yes, and yes. All of that is true. But wow, that’s a lot of indignation to heap on something as inconsequential as a Taylor Swift video. At least in my book. So I watched the thing (the sacrifices I make for you, dear reader), and while it pains me to say so, I have to agree with the director, Joseph Khan, who told NPR in a statement:

This is not a video about colonialism but a love story on the set of a period film crew in Africa, 1950.

But then he ruins it with the equivalent of “I have lots of black friends …”:

The reality is not only were there people of color in the video, but the key creatives who worked on this video are people of color. I am Asian American, the producer Jil Hardin is an African American woman, and the editor Chancler Haynes is an African American man.

I chalk this one up to our current fascination with the Outrage of the Day. And I totally didn’t write this just so I could post a clickbait photo of Taylor Swift and her leg …

Oh yeah, here’s the video.

Pulled over for being “uppity”

August 31, 2015 By Pete Trumbore

Dayton Police, combating direct eye contact since 1796.

In Dayton, Ohio, last week a black motorist was pulled over by a white police officer because, as the cop is heard saying on video,

You made direct eye contact with me and held onto it when I was passing you.

Where I grew up, in a small, rural town in central Florida, there was a word that got applied to blacks who didn’t know their place. That word was “uppity,” and was usually followed by another word, starting with the letter “N”.

Now you may argue that uppity is just a word meaning snobbish. But no, uppity, in this context, is racist. Don’t take my word for it. The second-most popular definition at Urban Dictionary lays it out.

Word used by racist old white Southerners to refer to any black person who looks them in the eye. Usually followed by [N-word]. “That uppity [N-word] is not working in the cotton field like he should be.”
CNN has the story, and the video.

The Oath Keepers have plans for Ferguson

August 18, 2015 By Pete Trumbore

Armed Black Panthers on the steps of the California State Legislature, June 1967.
Armed Black Panthers on the steps of the California State Legislature, June 1967.

 

According to a story at Red Dirt Report, the leader of the St. Louis County, MO. chapter of the Oath Keepers and his squad …

… will test state law with a unique experiment by arming 50 blacks with AR-15 rifles while marching through downtown Ferguson, Mo.

Sam Andrews, head of an Oath Keepers group in St. Louis County, Mo., confirmed the event will occur within the next “couple of weeks” to demonstrate to local enforcement officials the meaning and intent of Missouri’s open carry law.

“It will be an iconic event,” he said, comparing it to the raising of the American flag at Iwo Jima or the Martin Luther King, Jr.-led March on Washington, D.C.

According to Andrews, the group’s plans are motivated by two factors. First, he says the group was told by the St. Louis County police officials, who were otherwise cordial, that the group could not carry long-barreled rifles, like the military-grade weapons the group was armed with, inside Ferguson city limits.  That, Andrews said, is a misinterpretation of Missouri’s open-carry laws.

The second factor, though, is far more interesting and, historically speaking, far more provocative.  According to the website The Root, Black Lives Matter protesters challenged the all-white Oath Keepers about their ability to openly carry arms without fear in the middle of Ferguson’s huge police presence.  So in response, Andrews says his group wants to specifically arm black residents because:

Every person we talked to said if they carried they’d be shot by police. That’s the reason we’re going to hold this event and it will be a legal demonstration.

This is truly significant.  As Adam Winkler argued in his 2011 article in The Atlantic, “The Secret History of Guns,” gun control in the United States was for generations driven by fear of armed African Americans. This is why, for most of their respective histories, both the Ku Klux Klan and the NRA both worked hard to limit civilian access to firearms.

Much of this came to a head in California in 1967 when, as Winkler writes:

THE EIGHTH-GRADE STUDENTS gathering on the west lawn of the state capitol in Sacramento were planning to lunch on fried chicken with California’s new governor, Ronald Reagan, and then tour the granite building constructed a century earlier to resemble the nation’s Capitol. But the festivities were interrupted by the arrival of 30 young black men and women carrying .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns, and .45-caliber pistols.

The 24 men and six women climbed the capitol steps, and one man, Bobby Seale, began to read from a prepared statement. “The American people in general and the black people in particular,” he announced, must …

“… take careful note of the racist California legislature aimed at keeping the black people disarmed and powerless Black people have begged, prayed, petitioned, demonstrated, and everything else to get the racist power structure of America to right the wrongs which have historically been perpetuated against black people The time has come for black people to arm themselves against this terror before it is too late.”

Seale then turned to the others. “All right, brothers, come on. We’re going inside.” He opened the door, and the radicals walked straight into the state’s most important government building, loaded guns in hand. No metal detectors stood in their way.

What followed, less than a year later, was the passage of the Mulford Act, which repealed the California state law which allowed the public carrying of loaded firearms. It was signed into law by Gov. Ronald Reagan, today the patron saint not just of the Republican Party but of the gun rights movement generally.

Into this fraught confluence of gun rights, racism, and fear now tread the Oath Keepers. I’m not sure anyone can predict the outcome.

What is white privilege?

August 13, 2015 By Pete Trumbore

meme-privilege

White privilege is …

  • Not worrying you’ll wind up dead if the police pull you over for failing to signal a lane change or for not having a front license plate.
  • Not worrying you’ll wind up dead if the police stop you on suspicion of shoplifting.
  • Not worrying police will kill you for selling cigarettes on the street corner.
  • Not worrying police will kill you for carrying a BB gun in the toy aisle of a Walmart that also sells firearms.
  • Not worrying police will kill your son for playing with a toy gun at a neighborhood park.
  • Not worrying the volunteer neighborhood watch captain will kill your son for walking home at night after buying candy at a nearby convenience store.
  • Knowing you and your friends can safely show up in body armor and carrying semiautomatic rifles in a predominantly black community where angry protesters are confronting the police.
  • Knowing you can safely show up with your semiautomatic rifle slung across your back at a public event where the country’s first black president is speaking.
  • Knowing you can kill nine black worshippers at a historically black church and the first question people will ask is whether you are mentally ill, not whether you are racist.
  • Knowing that when pundits, politicians, and the media panic over extremism, the dangers of radicalization, and the threat of homegrown terrorists, they’re not talking about you or your group.
  • Knowing that if you are a celebrity charged with the horrific murder of your ex-wife and her friend, the last thing you have to worry about is whether Time Magazine will doctor your mug shot to make your skin look darker.

That’s white privilege.

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