And nothing made that clearer than the hearings on Ketanji Brown Jackson. From racism so blatant that Jimmy Kimmel observed, “I think your dog whistle’s busted guys, everyone can hear it now”:
To this outrageous line of questioning:
to this obscene call for SCOTUS to overturn Loving and let states criminalize marriage to non-whites:
…the GOP does not even attempt to hide that their core value is racism.
What the bigot Graham means is, “Do you go to a real Church with a white majority or one of those weird black churches that talk about civil rights and have a bunch of singing that spooks me?” The treatment of the black church as “fringe” is a constant in US religious culture. Remember, in GOP Amerikkka, white people are here because they have a right to be here. Black people are here on the sufferance of whites. That’s why white conservatives always say “I built my career with no help from anybody!” But when black athletes protest police violence they instantly are told by those conservatives that they should thankful for what this country gave them. Whites are at the center (including white churches). Blacks are at the periphery and have to prove that they are not threats. We can’t just assume that KBJ will be just merely on the strength of her record. She has to prove that because of her weird fringe religion, she will not use her office to wreak vengeance on whites instead being grateful for what she has been given. That’s the narrative implicit in this racist’s entire line of questioning. And it is, of course, vice-signaling to his base of MAGA racists too. It’s vote-getting as well as an attempt to stall confirmation. And note that it is 100% about race, not about abortion as the MAGA “prolife” cult of death lies, nor about “judicial philosophy”. It is 100% about race–because that is what the MAGA cult really cares about. All their crap about abortion is merely to use the unborn as human shields for that, the *real* #1 Agenda Item for this evil antichrist cult.
To see what I mean, note how Braun plays the game, because it illustrates the corruption of the “prolife” movement in chemical purity.
Here’s how the sleight of hand works. The lie is that this is about Roe v. Wade. The reality (and the real goal) is to reinstitute anti-miscegenation laws that would punish racially-mixed marriages. That is how this filthy evil GOP cult has always worked. Lie that you care about abortion, then use the unborn as human shields to impose your vile agenda of racism, theft, oppression, and murder on the US. This jackass wants to put “race traitors” in prison for marrying non-whites. And to underscore that, he offered two non-denial denials wherein he 1) told everybody with ears and a brain who clearly understood what he clearly said that they “completely misunderstood” him and 2) whined that he was confused by the guy asking the question and that why he said states should be allowed to criminalize interracial marriage. What he did not say was, “I was wrong to defend criminalization of interracial marriage and I hereby apologize and repent the evil I advocated.” He can’t, because racism is the GOP’s #1 vote-getter.
It should be noted that over 10% of all couples in a household were in an interracial relationship in 2016 and that number is only going to rise.
This means that the GOP Nationalist Conservative (NatC) Party has an awful lot of people to oppose. Of course, they already passionately love that we have the largest gulag on planet earth in all of human history (and one vastly over-proportionately filled with the brown people they hate), so they are on a collision course with demographics already. But that’s that thing: the dragon is furious because he knows his time is short. The NatCs are scrambling to end democracy and try to institute authoritarian fascistic rule founded on blood and iron because they know they can’t win fair and square. If they can lock up more enemies as race traitors, that serves their ends.
No. Really. They are telling us who they are and what their aims are:
As to the pathetic pleas, “Not all NatCs!” Yes. All NatCs. The whole party is guilty. Until this racist filth is smacked down by the rest of his party, Braun’s suggestion puts anti-race-mixing laws in the universe of discourse for the NatC Party. And it will not be smacked down, because this is what the NatC party is all about: courting their base of mouth-breathing bigots. Braun is playing with fire, and the entire party is ordered toward letting him, because the NatCs are a now openly racist party, as their whole plan of attack on KBJ makes extremely clear.
If this monstrous political cult is not destroyed at every level–local, state, and federal–they are going to destroy the US. And if conservative Christians don’t stop making excuses for this filth, their churches will become the homes of the lizard and the spider. Thorns shall grow over its strongholds,/nettles and thistles in its fortresses./It shall be the haunt of jackals. Our house will be left to us desolate. We will not see him again, until we say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’
If you think that impossible, be aware that this is precisely what Jesus warned the Church in Ephesus when he said, “I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place, unless you repent.” This racist shit cuts right at the heart of the gospel and is the perfect expression of the antichrist lie Paul spent his whole life fighting. That a significant percentage of Christians are its biggest champions is a scandal and an obscenity.
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26 Responses
I can’t help but notice that the self-appointed guardians of the White Race are always….always our most ignorant, inbred and pathetic specimens.
There are many more of us “race traitors” than they know, and they’re going to find that out the hard way when they try to reestablish Jim Crow in this country.
I own a firearm and think I have the right to do so. I also think Heller was wrongly decided. You can believe that a state has a power to ban something but shouldn’t. As Catholics we believe contraception and homosexuality, same sex “marriage” are mortal sins. Whether Griswold or the sodomy decisions were wrongly decided is a different question.
So you think that the state has the Right to ban interracial marriage?
Yes, just like my state has a right to confiscate my firearm.
Another insane person heard from.
And the catholic bishops supported the Hays Code which prohibited interracial movie couples and Pius XII wasn’t thrilled with the “colored” US Army troops in Rome. Yet I’m the nut.
That’s correct. You are the nut, using the bigotries of long dead people (whether factual or invented by you) to justify your bigotry. And clearly, you have put a lot of effort into researching excuses for your bigotry, suggesting your conscience is bothering you.
@ Taco
It’s not clear from the interview that the senator thinks curbing interracial marriage is desired. It’s only clear that he prioritizes state power over federal power.
@Artevelde:
I do think it likely, though, that that was kind of ‘dog whistle.’ It was precisely “States’ rights” that was the battle cry of the South during the American civil war. They said that the federal government did not have the right to deny them the right to have slavery legal in their states. I think that is Mark’s point in bringing it up. It seems strange, otherwise, the the subject of interracial marriage – surely an archaic-sounding subject! – is mentioned at all.
@JJ
If we lived in 1860, this would most definitely be true. I don’t think this is the case here, however, except perhaps in the very broad sense of “”whistling”” to people to are uncomfortable with a black woman in such a position. can’t exclude that this the case for the senator as well. I have two reasons to doubt this, however.
1. The question was framed. Anyone with a basic knowledge of communication training knows that the question was not meant to gage the senator’s position on subsidiarity in the legal process. It was clearly meant to allow people to call him a proponent of curbing interracial marriage later. He should not have been so foolish as to answer it, or even continue the interview.
2. The suggestion that the GOP or this senator *actually* desires to abolish interracial marriage, is, in my view, preposterous. Such intentions would cost them many more votes than it could possibly win them. Here as well, I must conclude that the senator was framed.
While the base of the GOP includes more than a few avowed racists, the GOP as such is not a racist party, and claiming it is, is a tactic that may work in the short term, but with rapidly diminishing returns, and eventual backlash. Politicians want votes, and the tide is already turning against the DEM’s among Hispanics. Once this also happens in the black community, there will be much wailing. Nobody is going to abolish interracial marriage in the USA, and claiming the GOP would do so, makes one look foolish. It also costs votes.
I showed this to my husband. Zero surprise. We gave each other a high five on living life to the fullest, and agreed that a diet of wonderbread and lemon sucking must be just terrible.
Could anyone tell me what’s racist about any of the first three pictures/clips? The CRT one, Lindsey at the hearing and the interracial marriage one? I don’t see it.
And yes, I did read Mark’s ”what Graham truly means”, but I don’t hear that in Graham’s question. Then again, I’m not an American canine, so the whistle probably doesn’t work on me.
Jackson is the first Black nominee to SCOTUS in 30 years. And also the first in that time to be questioned about her faith.
– joel
@ Joel
I think it’s clear that Graham is playing on what happened to Coney Barrett, although that was not, if I remember correctly, a SCOTUS hearing. Anyway, perhaps it’d be best if these things never happened. Still, wouldn’t call it racism. Partisan tit-for-tat, really.
Mark’s post was about dog whistles. Each of the three pictures depicts a dog whistle of the American right these days. A bit of context and background. The reason race relations are so strained in the US dates back to the Civil War. Imagine, a large swath of states lost both a war AND their slaves. Lots of people dead, and not only that, you can’t enslave other human beings anymore. People are dead, the business model is dead and hopes and dreams for making it big with a plantation full of slaves is also dead. People need scapegoats. That’s a lot of bitterness for the Trumpists to capitalize on to win a lot of electoral votes. Think of post WWI Germany and the rise of Nazism. The comparisons are apt.
1 – When I see that meme I read that it isn’t about KBJ the person but CRT (Critical Race Theory) the issue. Implying that KBJ (the black person) can’t form a justified legal ruling on Critical Race Theory. CRT is the dog whistle.
2 – Black churches were and are not only places of worship, but places of community and organization. Over the decades, you’d hear about black churches being firebombed because of this. South Carolina, where Lindsey Graham is from, is part of the old Confederacy. The smokescreen is faith and family. The dog whistle is KBJ’s race and belonging to a black church. It is actually to KBJ’s credit that she doesn’t speak much about it.
3 – The senator gave his answer in the first 11 seconds. “Yes” the states should regulate interracial marriage. This is despicable. No one should regulate interracial marriage. “States rights’ is an old smokescreen going back to the Civil War.
Thank you, workbeastie. I would suggest that in case one and two, something else is going on though.
1. It’s not – mainly – about race. It mostly means ”liberals will infest our schools with liberal stuff. Cue free school choice. The lady’s black face is perhaps helpful is this respect, but it would have worked nearly as well with a white DEM named Kimberly Ann Smith.
2. It’s not about black churches. It’s petty vengeance for Amy Coney Barrett. Again, it would have worked well enough with a white woman who can perhaps be lured into screaming ”THEOCRACY”. KBJ handled it well though, but so did Barret. These hearings just nasty.
@Artevelde, I’m surprised by your sudden lapse in judgement.
Also, as someone who is around here a bit you might know that a Mr Roy Rohter (why protect him anymore?) informed me that I shouldn’t have married outside of my race after an everyday, morning, weekday mass in Montecito, CA. My son was in my arms when he said it. I still can’t fathom why he would say that. I used to be shocked that an orthodox Catholic who founded Catholic schools would say that –until it finally occurred to me that there is nothing orthodox about people like that. They may claim the bells and smells, but they don’t know how their actions smell to God.
@ Taco
Such things should not be said, or thought of. That thinking of sin is akin to sinning is something we should all be aware of. You probably know I’m in an interracial marriage myself, with a Tamil lady. I prefer not to use the word interracial though, because I believe an emphasis on skin color is neither Christian nor particularly useful. This approach has some drawbacks though, but I think color blindness is, at the end of the day, the best way of dealing with such matters.
As for dog whistles, they exist. I don’t think the examples in this post are well chosen though. Come to think of it, don’t you and many others here, including Mark, realize that the word brown in ”black and brown people” is a dog whistle in itself? Are you not aware of all the people that wish to be ”brown” because it means ”better than them blacks”?
White people didn’t invent color as a weapon, Taco, though I grant that they have used it in the USA to great effect. Indians have been mapping and segregating people according to color since forever, though of course, being hypocrites like all of us, they prefer to think of it as something the white man brought during the colonial age.
“I think color blindness is, at the end of the day, the best way of dealing with such matters.”
In heaven I’m sure that’s the policy. But in America we have deeply entrenched structures of sin that treat races very differently. (Policing and the lingering effects of real estate zoning are two prominent examples.) We MUST acknowledge those structures and try to compensate for them – to do otherwise is to cooperate with evil.
– joel
@ Joel
I have no argument with that. I am not someone who argues structural racism is a figment of Marxist imagination. I am, however, someone who would stress as well that things like general poverty or unemployment are often caused by behavioral/cultural patterns as well, and that this too is an element that has to be taken into account when enacting social policy and furthering social mobility.
Artevelde, I used to defend some of the more crafty racists tooth and nail as well. I argued that they were well informed and just stating simple facts. I used to believe that I wasn’t racist in the least even long after marrying my (brown) husband. (black and brown–meaning African origin or Hispanic–maybe Indigenous. In the case of my husband, all three.)
Trump painfully illuminated the last vestiges of my own racism–yes– even decades after marrying a brown man. I remember feeling uncomfortable when the fine Christian man that delivered all eight of our children referred to my husband as “one of the good ones”. Dr. Green, a lovely human being if ever there was one, was generous enough to deliver many of the welfare babies in our community. He served as a missionary in Samoa and completed his residency in Oakland CA. As my mother would have stated it: “he served the dregs of humanity.” So why did I feel uncomfortable with such words?–
Because my husband’s family had fought their way up to a level of affluence. What did that affluence afford them? Excellent manners, elegant clothing and education at exclusive schools. How did they do it? I don’t have all of the pieces of the puzzle. The real question is, did they behave as ladies and gentlemen? I’d answer that question by saying they they behaved no better than the royalty of Europe or Washington D.C.
I don’t feel like spelling out for you what I’m thinking.
But I sat at their tables for years and years and listened politely to their conversation, rarely adding anything to those conversations–that I agreed with–except for the small voice inside of me that did not.
@Artevelde:
The difficulty is that “behavioural/cultural” patterns are themselves in part consequences of past oppression and racism. In Aotearoa New Zealand, Maori are disproportionately poor, unemployed, and, yes, engaged in criminal activity. No one knows for certain what things were like before the English came, but it is certain that much of modern Maori problems are a consequence of the past relations between the incoming people and Maori – and the incoming people came with their own burden of assumed, because unconscious, racism.
Our ACT party wants to treat everyone exactly the same. Everyone has the same opportunity; bad outcomes are your fault. This is not remotely fair. Everyone does not have the same opportunity – because “all men are created equal” does not mean “all men have equal ability” – and much of that inability is due not to genetics but to history.
@ JJ
I’m aware of the cynical approach of ”let them pull themselves up by their bootstraps”. It is not what I suggested, and no analysis based on genetics has ever convinced me.
However, and this may sound harsh depending on the circumstances (it definitely is a harsher conclusion when conquered native people are concerned), it is not because cultural patterns are in part caused by history, that they should not be addressed. Two reasons.
1. You rightly say partly. The historical explanation works well when let’s say a nomadic people is overrun by a sedentary one. It it less useful when disadvantaged groups within a society begin to form their own subculture, and it’s not at all or barely relevant when two or more groups are united in some form (Belgium is not really the cause of Portugal’s lower GDP per capita
2. It’s not the case that because behavioral patterns are caused by history, that they can be simply undone by apologizing for this history, or recognizing it. Some things are nearly irreversible if you’re not willing to go with the suggestion that one side or perhaps both should undergo some change.
There are many ways of dealing with such disadvantages, but I think that ultimately they come down to some form of segregation or assimilation. I Would like to hear your ideas on the matter though.
“I would like to hear your ideas on the matter though”
All of the above 🙂 And, yes, of course, disadvantaged groups do form their own subcultures. Maori are far more unvaccinated than Pākehā. Much of this is distrust of the system – and some, at least, of that is based on very considerable abuse of Maori by the system in the past. We all must change.
The cohabitation of cultural equals – Flemish and Walloons; English and Indians in New Zealand – is a much different matter (although colour prejudice against Indians does exist here; still basically different). Even here, absolutely, both must change.
I don’t have much specific to offer. I was really just kind of knee-jerk reacting to, yes, “equal opportunity for all. Why can’t they just do like me?”
jj
@ Joel, yes.
Thanks
And then we can embrace the utter beauty of color. I simply can conceive of ignoring it.