Thanks to Mother Jones for the image of George Takei.
In the Mother Jones interview with George Takei he gives a fascinating insight into the role of future-Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren in Japanese Internment and the strategic historical silencing of the internments.
GT: Yes, for America it’s a shameful experience—embarrassing—and for some non-Japanese Americans, it’s something they don’t like to talk about. For example the attorney general of California at that time was very ambitious, he wanted to become governor. He saw that the single most popular issue was “getting rid of the Japs,” and he used this to get elected. After two terms he went on to become Chief Justice of the United States Supreme Court. His name was Earl Warren—a so-called liberal justice. He was prodded and challenged by Japanese Americans throughout his career. He only spoke about it when he was near the end of his life. That’s one reason why our history books are rather mute.
Kiese Laymon is currently an Associate Professor of English and the co-director of Africana Studies at Vassar College. This essay was originally published on his blog, Cold Drank, and was republished with permission. It is an excerpt from Laymon’s forthcoming book, On Parole: An Autobiographical Antidote to Post-Blackness. Laymon is also the author of the forthcoming novel, Long Division, which will be released in early 2013.
I’ve had guns pulled on me by four people under Central Mississippi skies — once by a white undercover cop, once by a young brother trying to rob me for the leftovers of a weak work-study check, once by my mother and twice by myself. Not sure how or if I’ve helped many folks say yes to life but I’ve definitely aided in few folks dying slowly in America, all without the aid of a gun.
The college decides that two individual fraternity members, Shonda and I will be put on disciplinary probation for using “racially insensitive language” and the two fraternities involved get their party privileges taken away for a semester. If there was racially insensitive language Shonda and I could have used to make those boys feel like we felt, we would have never stepped to them in the first place.
Mama’s antidote to being born a black boy on parole in Central Mississippi is not for us to seek freedom; it’s to insist on excellence at all times. Mama takes it personal when she realizes that I realize she is wrong. There ain’t no antidote to life, I tell her. How free can you be if you really accept that white folks are the traffic cops of your life? Mama tells me that she is not talking about freedom. She says that she is talking about survival.
Hmmm. . . it does sound a little scripted. But I love the “shirtless Matthew McConaughey” line. Please don’t read the comments unless you would like to be enraged.
Katrina brought out the worst in the law enforcement community of New Orleans. Please note that these are federal convictions. The state of Louisiana declined to prosecute any of these cases.
Two officers – sergeants Kenneth Bowen and Robert Gisevius – were sentenced on Wednesday to 40 years in prison years for killing 17-year-old James Brissette and wounding four other people. Another officer, Anthony Villavaso, received 38 years for the same crime.
The court heard that Bowen used an unauthorised AK-47 to spray bullets at a group of civilians hiding behind a concrete barrier. Gisevius used a military-style M-4 rifle to shoot at unarmed people. Villavaso fired at least nine bullets at civilians with his AK-47.
A fourth policeman, Robert Faulcon, was sentenced to 65 years for killing Ronald Madison, a 40-year-old man with learning difficulties, by shooting him in the back with a shotgun. Madison’s brother, Lance, was then arrested and accused of attempted murder after the police tried to cover up their actions by falsely accusing him of shooting at officers on the bridge. He was held in jail for three weeks before a court freed him.
Plies is one of the least conscious rappers I know. Despite his cultural fifteen minutes crossing over with Gucci Mane’s fraternity party anthem “Wasted,” Plies has made music discussing his problems associated with the representation of young black men and violence. His song about Trayvon Martin covers some of the predictable landscape and I find surprisingly poignant.
Perhaps the massive resonance of the murder of Trayvon Martin is because the crime is so obscene. The victim seems so innocent and the killer seems so enthusiastic to kill. The crime is enraging because of the 911 tapes, the images of Martin in his football uniform, and his desperate phone call to his girlfriend. We are invited to view a real injustice.
But of course racist killings take place all the time. The difference is the victims are often blamed for their killing. The usual way this is done is to associate some socially unacceptable behavior (sex, drugs, rap music, clothing) with the murdered victim and call them a “suspect.”
For people who regularly experience police harassment, the inaction taken probably seems like a confirmation that the system works against you. For people who do experience privilege of not having to regularly deal with police (corrupt and otherwise) the inaction taken against Zimmerman probably seems like a grotesque aberration of the system.
Both of these groups of people will don hoodies to march for justice for Trayvon. A big part of that anger is fueled by the perception that this violence was exceptional. I would argue that it is ordinary. What is exceptional in the Trayvon Martin case is that the victim blaming is particularly hard. *
Lets take a quick look at the ways the press and police did Sean Bell dirty after he was killed. Undercover police officers shot fifty bullets into Bell’s car the night before his 2006 wedding.
Five of the seven officers investigating the club were involved in the shooting. Detective Paul Headley fired one round, Officer Michael Carey fired three, Officer Marc Cooper fired four, Officer Gescard Isnora fired eleven, and veteran officer Michael Oliver emptied two full magazines, firing 31 shots from a 9mm handgun and pausing to reload at least once.
Although Sean Bell’s case is used as an example of police misconduct, there was a lengthy series of public relations attempts to blame Bell for the murders.
Initially it was claimed that the officers were afraid of gun violence from Bell and his companions. Never found a gun or evidence that there had been a gun in the car.
Then the press and police pointed out that that Bell had been legally intoxicated at the time he took the wheel, usually adding in that he was drunk at a strip club. In essence suggesting that Bell had been shot because he had been drinking and driving or cavorting with strippers.
Michael Wilson from the New York Times makes this idiotic statement:
Further, trial testimony showed that Mr. Bell may have played some role, however unwitting, in the shooting, as he was drunk by legal standards when he pressed down on the accelerator of his fiancée’s Nissan Altima and struck Detective Isnora in the leg in an attempt to flee.
Despite being a poster case for injustice, the victim blaming helped to let the police killers go free. The cops were acquitted because they were found to be confused and it’s okay to kill people if it’s a mistake. Scratch that, it’s okay to empty your magazine into a car and then reload and empty the second magazine into the car before figuring out what is going on.
But yesterday something interesting happened. The cops who killed Sean Bell, some eight years ago were finally released from their jobs as cops. One is getting fired! Huh? I wonder if the public scrutiny in the Trayvon Martin case raised up enough public discussion to pressure the New York Police Department to clean house.
For an interesting view on the construction of public information. Check out the discussions about the editing of the Sean Bell Wikipedia page. Note the battle over how to talk about Sean Bell’s arrest record. Fascinating discussions about what to include and how to write the information. A great place to view the articulation of victim blaming.
If you aren’t reading the brilliant and insightful blog doorknockers — go catch up. I was struck this morning by Kristia’s essay inviting a deeper understanding of the go-to-tool-for-reflection Peggy McIntosh’s essay “Unpacking the backpack of white privilege.” This article has been THE explanation of injustice to people with power for like 20 years. And it doesn’t really get at the full power of language and inequality.
I’ve always felt like McIntosh points to a kind of Annunciation frame of justice. If a person with power can announce that they know how they are privileged then they’re off the hook. Thanks to Doorknockers for some broadening of this discussion.
It should be clear by now that this is not at all intended as a bashing of Peggy McIntosh, but it is very much a critique of academics and schools that maintain at best a lightweight analysis of power. They do this primarily by letting one article by one White woman dominate conversations about privilege, as opposed to hosting a larger, deeper analysis of systems of power in our society. They do this by keeping the numbers of brown-skinned faculty and students low. They do this by rewarding brown-skinned students who agree to shut up in racist, heterosexist classes. They do this by not teaching about privilege, power, and oppression through the very writing, oratory, panel interviews, and reflection of parents and children who work minimum-wage, who are of color, who are political and religious minorities.
Sometimes the British media get a more clear sense of what is happening in the United States than any domestic source.
So, here is how it goes. First, the state passes a harsh immigration law. Then, it detains large numbers of immigrants. Third, private prisons (LCS, CCA, GEO) receive fresh inmates. And finally, the artificially created labor shortage is supplied by the new inmates. Does this sound like modern-day slavery to anyone?
The rest of the country can only look in shock and dismay, as once again, Alabama, a state renowned for its historical role in racism, segregation and slavery, leads the nation into another round of shame.
I like sports because you can occasionally see a really good scrap — sure, some folks win by being faster or bigger, but there are also those underdogs for whom tactical innovation and hustle are their way to victory. I like the epic showdown between a hitter and a pitcher. And I like it because I thought it was basically fair. Of course I was a fool.
This is exactly what Southern Methodist University’s researchers did when they examined more than 3.5 million pitches from 2004 to 2008. Their findings say as much about the enduring relationship between sports and bigotry as they do about the synaptic nature of racism in all of American society.
First and foremost, SMU found that home-plate umpires call disproportionately more strikes for pitchers in their same ethnic group. Because most home-plate umpires are white, this has been a big form of racial privilege for white pitchers, who researchers show are, on average, getting disproportionately more of the benefit of the doubt on close calls.
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Life of refinement 