I just think this is a good article..
http://beeryblog.wordpress.com/2011/10/21/racism-whats-in-a-word/Racism – What’s in a Word
Posted on October 21, 2011 by beeryblog
by Sherry ~
Morgan Freeman recently spoke the truth about the Tea Party:
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Their stated policy, publicly stated, is to do whatever it takes to see to it that Obama only serves one term. What’s, what does that, what underlines that? ‘Screw the country. We’re going to whatever we do to get this black man, we can, we’re going to do whatever we can to get this black man outta here.’
Well, it just shows the weak, dark, underside of America. We’re supposed to be better than that. We really are. That’s, that’s why all those people were in tears when Obama was elected president. Ah, look at what we are. Look at how, this is America. You know? And then it just sort of started turning because these people surfaced like stirring up muddy water.
~ Morgan Freeman
The truth, as it tends to do, set the right-wing ablaze. And, it was on The Blaze – where the awful, sick and stupid gather to bash liberalism – that I came across this provocative comment:
Why is it that blacks are only for blacks? Who would have ever thought that Morgan Freedman was a racist? When will we begin to shun black racism and make it a bad thing? Its time. Morgan I will never watch your movies again for the simply reason that you cannot see beyond your skin color.
This asinine suggestion prompted a spirited back and forth about the definition of racism and whether, by definition, a black person can be a racist. Merriam-Webster would suggest, yes. But, is Merriam the final word? I would argue, not.
When I was in my last year of law school, I started working at the Legal Aid and Defender Association of Detroit. It was run as a non-profit, and by an extraordinary African-American attorney by the name of Myzell Sowell. The chief deputy was George W. Crockett III, whose father had been a brilliant African-American attorney, then judge, and ultimately US Congressman.
More than half of our support staff was black. Half of the attorneys were black. In the evening, after the close of the workday, the office was a way station for all manner of liberal – white and black. Judges, high-ranking police persons, politicians, and just ordinary people would gather to have a few drinks and discuss a wide range of topics. We’d have all the world’s problems solved at the end of those wonderful nights.
Coming from a deeply white environment, I got a fast and intense education. I was teased in loving gentleness by these men and women, who slowly showed me a side of life that was utterly unknown to me. It was in those days and especially in those nights that my eyes were opened to what racism means in our society.
One of the things I came to believe was that racism as a term could not apply to African-Americans. It was much more than a dictionary definition:
The belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, esp. so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race or races.
No, racism – active, pernicious racism – has everything to do with power. It is not only that the racist hates because of some characteristic that he believes makes him superior, but rather that he has the power to impact, in a negative way, the very lives of those he hates.
It means that, as the member of a majority, he can pass laws that inhibit those who he deems inferior from enjoying the same rights and privileges that he does. It means that he can tell another man not to drink drink out of “his” drinking fountain. Not to vote in “his” elections. Not to live in “his” neighborhood.
Minorities do not have the power to impose any such restrictions on whites and therefore the word is not applicable to them.
Now, to a degree, I am playing a game of semantics. For I would certainly agree that African-Americans, like Latinos and Asians, and Native Peoples, are all capable of bigotry and prejudice in any form and of mistreating individually and collectively others who are “not like them.”
So why the fuss?
Quite simply this.
White racists engage now in a diabolical game of “reversies”- reverse racism.
This game playing ramped up during the Reagan years when there was a full-out assault on affirmative action. It was “unfair”, it related to a “time long passed.” Everyone now had an equal opportunity.
This insidious reversal would soon express itself in the white hijacking of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr’s, call that “we will be judged by the content of our character and not the color of our skin.”
The hijacking is newly accelerated with the TeaNutz® insurgence. Their natural racism, long hidden by increasing social pressure, has been unleashed – exposed by a constant and never-ending attack on any African-American who “plays the race card.” They are aided, abetted, and invited to this position by the likes of Fox Noise, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, and a host of others whose real goal is to keep control in the hands of the monied elites – who are, coincidentally, really, really white.
Going to The Blaze and reading comments you will learn that any black person who dares to suggest that racism is still an issue in America, must themselves be a no-good racist. This, then, serves as pretext to unload all manner of ugly invective against Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Van Johnson, and ANY other African-American who they see as attempting to further the lives and well-being of black folks.
The TeaNutz® eschew the term African-American, claiming that it is “un-American.” They declare their lack of racism by telling you how much they admire MLK, all the while claiming that he would be against universal health care, against Obama, and that he would today be a conservative. They are apparently unaware that he was marching in support of sanitation workers right before his assassination – gasp unions!
They shout their support for Herman Cain, Allen West and Alan Keyes as proof that they are not hateful. This is the blacklist of “good negroes”. We know, of course, that there are black folk, like any folk, who are willing to be paraded in return for crumbs of attention.
There have always been those willing to be complicit in their own destruction – for money, some brief safety, or as some manifestation of self-loathing. This is true without regard to race, ethnicity, religious persuasion, or any other grouping that can be conjured up.
The right’s cynical game – to claim victim-hood while victimizing – cannot work. For, whatever imagined prejudice they attribute to African-Americans like Morgan Freeman and whatever imagined tolerance they attribute to themselves, what makes racism work – what animates it - is power. A power that they have had and chosen to use against their fellow man.
The right seems always to control the words – no longer, we’re taking that power away from them.
~
Sherry is a long-time beeryblogger and has a wonderful site of her own where you can learn more about her life and her passions –
http://afeatheradrift.wordpress.com/
