Race and the Race

Black Americans now are clearly behind Hillary, apparently either forgetting or choosing to ignore how Bill Clinton triangulated them into some very damaging welfare and criminal justice "reform."  Well, Bill wasn't actually racist — just acting to mollify that solid chunk of the American public that is actually racist.  Was Hillary behind him on that?  Her "super-predator" comment at the time makes it pretty clear.  Okay, forgive and forget.  Political expediency isn't real racism, is it?  Or is it?

Now the Republican establishment is wringing its hands over Tr*mp, who wasn't exactly prompt in his disavowal of David Duke and the Klan.  Well, all Trump has been doing has been saying out loud what the Republican establishment has been dog whistling since Nixon invented the Southern Strategy.  (Tr*mp supporters love that he says things "out loud")  It's crystal clear that racism is all the GOP has had to offer working class whites over the past half century or so.  Apart from racism, Republicanism consists entirely of giveaways to the super-rich.

Even though I've sworn off prediction, I have high hopes that a Tr*mp candidacy will hand the Democrats the Senate, and ensure a reasonable Supreme Court appointment after all the intermittent bullshit has been endured.  Still, I'm not too hopeful regarding a restoration of the Voting Rights Act or Affirmative Action.  Blacks have opted for incrementalism rather than revolution, which means that anything that does change does so glacially, at best.

Race in America

It's not pleasant to be black in America, especially if you happen to be young and male.  It's not even especially pleasant to be a Harvard educated, dark complected President of the United States raised in a middle class white household who won office with a ton of Wall Street money.  The die-hard racist elements in American society don't make any particular distinctions.

 Black Americans were jubilant when the Hawaiian was elected and re-elected.  It seemed like some sort of turning point.  It wasn't.


I suspect the biggest problem is that so many white people (and Asians as well) think young black men are just too damned scary.  George Zimmerman thought Trayvon Martin was so scary he just had to follow him and shoot him.  Police officer Randall Kerrick thought auto accident victim Jonathan Ferrell was so scary he just had to shoot at him twelve times, hitting him with ten bullets.  There are plenty of other examples, so we don't have to speculate on why police officer Darren Wilson just had to shoot Michael Brown six times — twice in the top of the head, suggesting that he might already have fallen down face first after the other four shots.

So why are young black men so scary?  Well, part of the answer is that a lot of them want to look scary.  They want to look like those thug rappers, perhaps, or they want to look scary so other people will just leave them the hell alone.  Maybe, sometimes, it works.

Sometimes, though, it doesn't.