The one consistent point I've seen from the beginning of the anti-woke movement is that the supremely delicate feelings of White people MUST be protected. It pains them to think that racism existed, or still exists. It tortures them to think that they're the problem. BUT . . . they insist on their right to be racist! Thus, we must teach the schoolkids that those darkies deserved every bit of it, and hey! it was actually good for them!
If you can declare that women don’t have legal control of their bodies when it comes to reproduction, why not add that slaves - who had no control of their bodies at all - benefited from their enslavement? You might almost think that pseudoconservative “intellectuals” are building a case for the eradication of freedom in favor of fascism.
The slaves benefited from slavery? Who knew! And they made money from the skills so graciously bestowed upon them by their kindly masters, who always had the slaves’ best interests at heart. Huh. And the owners sired innumerable progeny with their female chattel, through totally consensual intimacy, thereby increasing the number of children who would avail themselves of the benefits of indentured servitude!
It is high time to demand reparations for the descendants of slave owners. We can later discuss reparations for the Caucasians who were harmed by demonic residents of the former slave sectors while they were merely attempting to keep the peace there.
As a thought experiment: let’s say that, even if the claims of the slavery apologists were true, and the history of black folks and former slaves begins at the end of the Civil War and we can’t consider the damage caused by slavery or it would hurt white folks feelings: what do you find in the law codes of Florida, and the other Confederate states, and what is the actual history of the use of those laws on the former slaves?
I know you’ll find a vast attempt at suppression (as the emancipated weren’t view as fully human) keeping those folks in a subordinate and inferior condition: racist to its core. If we only consider the Jim Crow era, the lynchings, the white pogroms (Rosewood FL is an exemplar: like Tulsa or Forsyth Co GA, and the other “ethnic cleansings” in Union and Towns County GA: some of which my ancestors seem to have inflicted…), the whole “we must not let the Black man over the White man” (as I was told by a county worker in Gilmer Co GA about that “dang Oblama” {sic} in '08), the whole social move that revenged the Confederacy’s loss on the slave they couldn’t own anymore…
Start at any point and justify the disparate treatment. It’s indefensible.
Even worse vis a vis Florida’s Candide approach of seeing only the good in chattel slavery is the operative assumption that Africans had no relevant prior experience. That is, the working assumption that… you know, it’s difficult for me to continue this line. But Florida’s implied life of a slave in their homeland is beyond disgusting.
Good, but bleak(!) read. I was gifted Huck Finn when I was in Grade 6. This is not a story that needs defending by or from anyone.
I'm not American, but I think I'm allowed to be offended by what's happening there, or anywhere.
I get what you're saying about the... endgame(?). I see the same thing (oligarchs or corporations, less clear!). Unfortunately for us, we don't have the luxury of pinning it all on a Soros-like evil, the Illuminati, or some other bullshit. Our fight isn't against "evil." It's against fucking stupidity itself. And we should despair.
Insightful analysis. But wait! There's more! Consider now and get more than the simple brain rush of antagonism and owning your political opposites!
When I was in junior high, early adolescence, I used to take up arguments on the wrong side with utter sincerity. I did not believe what I was saying, but I enjoyed acting as if I did. Enjoyed is perhaps the wrong word. I understood it even then as a ploy, a form of teasing without negative consequences. It garnered attention, and provided also a means of controlling a conversation.
The idiots you described are "full-growed" and ought to know better. They are getting high on their own supply of the bigger lie by giving the lie. Why? Because they like playing these roles. It is masturbatory joy to them. This is how I would confront them. I would say outright they might as well just unzip and jack off in front of their audience.
I wonder if their writing ever attracts the kind of attention they want. And what is that? What kind of attention do they want?
As a young teen, I got more than one girl to engage in prolonged arguments with me and I did eventually have sex years later with one of them. But I'm still not sure that was what I intended. It certainly wasn't a conscious plan.
From strange sources comes personal insight. This is my method. This is why I can see my own shadow without fear or disgust.
The mind reels. Puts me in the mind of how British Conservatives and Protestants / pro-Union advocates (putting it mildly) painted the Catholics / Republicans as vicious animals during The Troubles in Northern Ireland across all media platforms and through simply vicious propaganda campaigns... with the British Government in lock step for decades, like they weren't acting in defense in any way and just wanted to kill cops and Unionists. They positioned cameras behind the lines to make it appear the B-Specials were being attacked for no reason, when the larger question was why were they there in the first place? Hope I'm not pushing any buttons with my observation. This current episode is so horrifying and mind-blowingly insane to me all I can make are correlations to help me process. I weep. How did we get here? << purely rhetorical question.
Jul 25, 2023·edited Jul 25, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
Not sure there's any kind of strategy or long-term thinking in all of this, reactionaries react, it's just what they do. They see the coverage of the Tulsa race riot and think, "Well, they musta some SOMETHIN' to deserve that!" or they see honest portrayals of the living hell that was slavery and think, "C'mon, couldn't be all that bad!" Then you pack your boards of education with such people and it all comes out in writing. And then white, racist teachers (of which there are more than a few) get a chance to try "We done 'em a favor!" out in a classroom, based on their racist assumption that there's nothing worse than being an African in Africa. Naturally they'll scan the classroom for the presence of black faces and scale it back a bit if they see one (racist shit like this white people enjoy most when in the exclusive company of their own kind.)
Jul 25, 2023·edited Jul 25, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
As a kid growing up in suburban KY in the 50s I remember being told that slavery wasn't so bad, seeing as how slaves didn't have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter. Plus, as Mr. Newman so eloquently put it, "Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet." FWIW, I didn't believe a word of it. But now, it's back - same old shit in a brand new bag: Contented darkies happily learning a trade (sharecropping) on the plantation. What's next, state-sponsored minstrel shows?
Jul 25, 2023·edited Jul 25, 2023Liked by Roy Edroso
I understand their fixation on school curriculum a little better after reading the article below from Politico (And "I understand ___ better after reading Politico" is not a sentiment I often express.) My own ex-governor Scott Walker helpfully explains that elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities, media and social media and "the culture" are all conspiring to push our youth away from the Republican party*. Naturally, they have no choice but to take control of ALL of these institutions if they are to survive.
*Did he leave anything out? Isn't this just saying "All of reality conspires against us!"
*Insert "No, it is the children who are wrong" meme here.
Worth noting that this is recognizable as a mild evolution of standard OG Lost Cause stuff, the kind of thing you hear from your southern relatives and in-laws all the time. DeSantis's team is playing to that audience. Racism of various kinds may be pervasive in the US, but the white south has a deep need for a story that exonerates their institutions and imaginary 'traditions'. The constitution of the CSA, the words of Calhoun and Stephens, the various declarations of secession --- these will not be read in southern schools any time soon.
I keep getting hung up on what's the point of this fan dance? Frankly, I think the idea they have a long-term plan to "re-legitimize" slavery is dubious, mostly because of the "long-term" part. Nothing else in the Republican Cinematic Universe has even a whiff of long-term thinking to it. All that's left is fan service, what my Catholic education used to call self-pleasuring. If it feels good, do it baby!
But perhaps I'm wrong, and they want to cover the childrens' minds with a protective layer of Bondo to ward off that Woke mind virus DeSantis has hung his career on. Given the level of intellectual rigor shown so far, that's plausible. Mind-bogglingly stupid, but plausible. No one who hasn't injected the Flavor-ade in their veins is fooled by any of this, and even if this plan "works", all you have is a bunch of poorly educated teenagers more isolated from the mainstream culture than they already are. Good for the country music industry, at least.
"The smarter conservative hustlers may dream bigger still — of a time when the message that slavery wasn’t so bad is so well-internalized that the kind of complaints now regularly expressed about greedy bosses and poor working conditions and inequity will, like racism, be rendered incomprehensible, even among white people."
As a former union organizer, I know the idea that you should just shut up and stop complaining and just be glad you've got a job, ANY job, is a tool that white people have been using for generations to mildly accept their place in a system of wage-slavery. Not really any need to bring in the other kind.
The one consistent point I've seen from the beginning of the anti-woke movement is that the supremely delicate feelings of White people MUST be protected. It pains them to think that racism existed, or still exists. It tortures them to think that they're the problem. BUT . . . they insist on their right to be racist! Thus, we must teach the schoolkids that those darkies deserved every bit of it, and hey! it was actually good for them!
If you can declare that women don’t have legal control of their bodies when it comes to reproduction, why not add that slaves - who had no control of their bodies at all - benefited from their enslavement? You might almost think that pseudoconservative “intellectuals” are building a case for the eradication of freedom in favor of fascism.
I thought for sure the " CW"
stood for " Cock Womble" Turns out it's one word
(Cockwomble) so I couldn't use that. After a lot of thought, I've settled on
" Constantly Wrong" for it's unerring accuracy.
The Urban dictionary made me laugh " similar to asshat" Ha!
I was walking through production today and one of the German Iris they were working on was named " Dusky Challenger "
Everyone thought it sounded racist AF.
Nice essay!
The slaves benefited from slavery? Who knew! And they made money from the skills so graciously bestowed upon them by their kindly masters, who always had the slaves’ best interests at heart. Huh. And the owners sired innumerable progeny with their female chattel, through totally consensual intimacy, thereby increasing the number of children who would avail themselves of the benefits of indentured servitude!
It is high time to demand reparations for the descendants of slave owners. We can later discuss reparations for the Caucasians who were harmed by demonic residents of the former slave sectors while they were merely attempting to keep the peace there.
As a thought experiment: let’s say that, even if the claims of the slavery apologists were true, and the history of black folks and former slaves begins at the end of the Civil War and we can’t consider the damage caused by slavery or it would hurt white folks feelings: what do you find in the law codes of Florida, and the other Confederate states, and what is the actual history of the use of those laws on the former slaves?
I know you’ll find a vast attempt at suppression (as the emancipated weren’t view as fully human) keeping those folks in a subordinate and inferior condition: racist to its core. If we only consider the Jim Crow era, the lynchings, the white pogroms (Rosewood FL is an exemplar: like Tulsa or Forsyth Co GA, and the other “ethnic cleansings” in Union and Towns County GA: some of which my ancestors seem to have inflicted…), the whole “we must not let the Black man over the White man” (as I was told by a county worker in Gilmer Co GA about that “dang Oblama” {sic} in '08), the whole social move that revenged the Confederacy’s loss on the slave they couldn’t own anymore…
Start at any point and justify the disparate treatment. It’s indefensible.
[Trigger warning]
Even worse vis a vis Florida’s Candide approach of seeing only the good in chattel slavery is the operative assumption that Africans had no relevant prior experience. That is, the working assumption that… you know, it’s difficult for me to continue this line. But Florida’s implied life of a slave in their homeland is beyond disgusting.
Good, but bleak(!) read. I was gifted Huck Finn when I was in Grade 6. This is not a story that needs defending by or from anyone.
I'm not American, but I think I'm allowed to be offended by what's happening there, or anywhere.
I get what you're saying about the... endgame(?). I see the same thing (oligarchs or corporations, less clear!). Unfortunately for us, we don't have the luxury of pinning it all on a Soros-like evil, the Illuminati, or some other bullshit. Our fight isn't against "evil." It's against fucking stupidity itself. And we should despair.
Insightful analysis. But wait! There's more! Consider now and get more than the simple brain rush of antagonism and owning your political opposites!
When I was in junior high, early adolescence, I used to take up arguments on the wrong side with utter sincerity. I did not believe what I was saying, but I enjoyed acting as if I did. Enjoyed is perhaps the wrong word. I understood it even then as a ploy, a form of teasing without negative consequences. It garnered attention, and provided also a means of controlling a conversation.
The idiots you described are "full-growed" and ought to know better. They are getting high on their own supply of the bigger lie by giving the lie. Why? Because they like playing these roles. It is masturbatory joy to them. This is how I would confront them. I would say outright they might as well just unzip and jack off in front of their audience.
I wonder if their writing ever attracts the kind of attention they want. And what is that? What kind of attention do they want?
As a young teen, I got more than one girl to engage in prolonged arguments with me and I did eventually have sex years later with one of them. But I'm still not sure that was what I intended. It certainly wasn't a conscious plan.
From strange sources comes personal insight. This is my method. This is why I can see my own shadow without fear or disgust.
The mind reels. Puts me in the mind of how British Conservatives and Protestants / pro-Union advocates (putting it mildly) painted the Catholics / Republicans as vicious animals during The Troubles in Northern Ireland across all media platforms and through simply vicious propaganda campaigns... with the British Government in lock step for decades, like they weren't acting in defense in any way and just wanted to kill cops and Unionists. They positioned cameras behind the lines to make it appear the B-Specials were being attacked for no reason, when the larger question was why were they there in the first place? Hope I'm not pushing any buttons with my observation. This current episode is so horrifying and mind-blowingly insane to me all I can make are correlations to help me process. I weep. How did we get here? << purely rhetorical question.
Not sure there's any kind of strategy or long-term thinking in all of this, reactionaries react, it's just what they do. They see the coverage of the Tulsa race riot and think, "Well, they musta some SOMETHIN' to deserve that!" or they see honest portrayals of the living hell that was slavery and think, "C'mon, couldn't be all that bad!" Then you pack your boards of education with such people and it all comes out in writing. And then white, racist teachers (of which there are more than a few) get a chance to try "We done 'em a favor!" out in a classroom, based on their racist assumption that there's nothing worse than being an African in Africa. Naturally they'll scan the classroom for the presence of black faces and scale it back a bit if they see one (racist shit like this white people enjoy most when in the exclusive company of their own kind.)
As a kid growing up in suburban KY in the 50s I remember being told that slavery wasn't so bad, seeing as how slaves didn't have to worry about food, clothing, and shelter. Plus, as Mr. Newman so eloquently put it, "Won't have to run through the jungle and scuff up your feet." FWIW, I didn't believe a word of it. But now, it's back - same old shit in a brand new bag: Contented darkies happily learning a trade (sharecropping) on the plantation. What's next, state-sponsored minstrel shows?
I understand their fixation on school curriculum a little better after reading the article below from Politico (And "I understand ___ better after reading Politico" is not a sentiment I often express.) My own ex-governor Scott Walker helpfully explains that elementary schools, high schools, colleges and universities, media and social media and "the culture" are all conspiring to push our youth away from the Republican party*. Naturally, they have no choice but to take control of ALL of these institutions if they are to survive.
*Did he leave anything out? Isn't this just saying "All of reality conspires against us!"
*Insert "No, it is the children who are wrong" meme here.
https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2023/07/21/gop-college-towns-00106974
Worth noting that this is recognizable as a mild evolution of standard OG Lost Cause stuff, the kind of thing you hear from your southern relatives and in-laws all the time. DeSantis's team is playing to that audience. Racism of various kinds may be pervasive in the US, but the white south has a deep need for a story that exonerates their institutions and imaginary 'traditions'. The constitution of the CSA, the words of Calhoun and Stephens, the various declarations of secession --- these will not be read in southern schools any time soon.
I keep getting hung up on what's the point of this fan dance? Frankly, I think the idea they have a long-term plan to "re-legitimize" slavery is dubious, mostly because of the "long-term" part. Nothing else in the Republican Cinematic Universe has even a whiff of long-term thinking to it. All that's left is fan service, what my Catholic education used to call self-pleasuring. If it feels good, do it baby!
But perhaps I'm wrong, and they want to cover the childrens' minds with a protective layer of Bondo to ward off that Woke mind virus DeSantis has hung his career on. Given the level of intellectual rigor shown so far, that's plausible. Mind-bogglingly stupid, but plausible. No one who hasn't injected the Flavor-ade in their veins is fooled by any of this, and even if this plan "works", all you have is a bunch of poorly educated teenagers more isolated from the mainstream culture than they already are. Good for the country music industry, at least.
"The smarter conservative hustlers may dream bigger still — of a time when the message that slavery wasn’t so bad is so well-internalized that the kind of complaints now regularly expressed about greedy bosses and poor working conditions and inequity will, like racism, be rendered incomprehensible, even among white people."
As a former union organizer, I know the idea that you should just shut up and stop complaining and just be glad you've got a job, ANY job, is a tool that white people have been using for generations to mildly accept their place in a system of wage-slavery. Not really any need to bring in the other kind.