This blog is dedicated to the struggles of people everywhere to advance human progress and save this planet from the decline of capitalism. Its focus, since 2011 has been supporting the emerging revolutions everywhere.
Much of the blame lies on the Clinton campaign: Clinton’s ill-advised strategy of appealing to perennially elusive “independents” and middle-class Republican women proved ineffectual and neutralized any progressive message. But an alarmed Left could and should have stepped in to fill the vacuum—that is, redirected at least some of the energy it put into criticizing Clinton into aggressively communicating to voters of color that, between the two candidates, one (Trump) would put us on the defensive and the other (Clinton) on the offensive.
Excuse me "In These Times," voters of color didn't elect the racist Donald Trump, "white" voters did and that includes members of the white "Left" who voted for Jill Stein or refused to vote at all. As I have shown, if Jill Stein voters in MI, WI and PA had voted for Hillary instead, these Muslims wouldn't be detained at the airports, a wall wouldn't be constructed on our southern border, 40,000 people wouldn't be projected to die from loss of health care, and Steve Bannon, a longtime white nationalist leader wouldn't be on the national security council.
Those you call "people of color," because they don't think of themselves as being as pure as freshly fallen snow, have always been aware of the genocidal danger a Donald Trump administration meant to us, even when the mantra of the white Left was "don't vote for the lesser of two evils," so please, don't ever come to us with the chauvinist nonsense that the failure of the [white] Left in this election was its failure to communicate the danger that Trump represents to us.
From July till November, this communist of color begged you to do exactly what you are now saying you should of done:
counterbalance it by mobilizing Democrats’ most reliable—and indispensable—constituents: people of color.
Then you have the unmitigated gaul to argue:
In major Pennsylvania and Wisconsin cities, a stronger effort—registering voters, volunteering to drive people to the polls, “walking-and-talking”—might have tipped the scales.
Is that your idea of how the white Left could have beat Trump, by driving African American voters to the polls? How about the white Left convincing Green Party voters in those two states plus Michigan to vote for Hillary Clinton instead of Jill Stein! That definitely would have tipped the scales. Or do you find it preferable to drive "people of color" vote for a neo-liberal rather than ask members of the white Left to soil themselves by voting for the lesser of two evils?
I've lived in Los Angeles since 1976, so even though I know it is one of those painful necessities of Southern California living, I have on many occasions protested going to LAX. Today was the first time I ever went to LAX to protest.
Los Angeles International Airport is the world's seventh busiest airport in terms of passenger traffic, and that what counted today. On an average day in 2016 221,702 passengers used LAX, but Sunday is not an average day. Sunday is its biggest day. I don't know how many protesters were at the airport today at its peak. I don't know how many are there now, but people were still arriving as I was leaving. I don't even know how to estimate it. Aerial photos will be of limited use because so many were indoors or under shelters, and even on open ground, once a crowd grows to more than a few thousand, I find it impossible to estimate crowd size, particularly one that is constantly in motion, as this one was. But one way to gage the size of today's protest is to note that on any given Sunday, LAX is design to move 300,000 passengers in and out and the number of people that almost spontaneously showed up at LAX to protest Trump's Muslim ban was enough to bring traffic through LAX to a screeching halt. Believe me. I have the sore feet to prove it.
I first heard about the protest on the Saturday evening news. Hundreds, some said thousands of people, were protesting at the Tom Bradley International terminal. I had just gotten off of work and was sorely tempted to set off for LAX for a night vigil, but decided against. The fight against Trump will be a long one. Its important to pace oneself.
I set off the next morning after a good breakfast and a quick visit with some friends on the beach. Rode my bike down to Lincoln, locked it up next to the Chinese fast food joint, and caught the No. 3 Big Blue Bus to the LAX Metro bus terminal, and from there caught the free airport shuttle bus. It was still fairly early and there appeared to be only a few other protesters among my fellow travelers.
I had the driver drop me just ahead of the line of TV trucks already parked just south of the international terminal, and made my way to the baggage claim and custom exit area on the lower level of the terminal. There I found a lively protest of several hundred already in progress and I think some of those protesters had been there all night.
I started shooting video and tweeting with my smartphone:
Then I tried to live stream. That did it. My battery was down to 0% in no time flat! Anticipating that, I had bought an AC charger with me, but it was a slow one. I found one of those seats close to an AC outlet [that are always so prized at airports]. It was also close enough that I could watch the protest while watching my phone charge. A big demonstration had been called for noon or 1 o'clock, depending on who you asked, and another one at 5:00pm had been announced. So I had plenty of time and wanted to be ready. I must have stayed there for about an hour.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters came strolling past me at one point with a couple of aides (or body guards?) in tow. I think she meant to be incognito, just checking it out, LAX is in her district, but I recognized her and talked with her briefly. She is hard on Trump, but so am I. I don't know if she recognized me, but I have talked with her more than a few times at those community meetings she would hold in various locations in South Central. They would go on for hours with no fanfare and no media, and then she'd stay after, even in the parking lot, driver/security standing next to the limo, until absolutely everyone who wanted to speak to her had a chance. This time she was in and out in a flash. She didn't speak to the protesters or hang around for more than a few minutes that I saw.
At one point I thought the protest was diminishing. I didn't realize that it was just moving outside until I went looking for coffee. Then I was blown away by what I found. It now must have been about 2:00pm and thousands of people were already protesting outside the terminal, and it just kept growing from there. The people protesting were like a cross section of Los Angeles, which also means they were mainly young, and mainly Caucasian. Everybody was in great spirits, everybody was feeling the power of the people. Everybody wanted a peaceful protest, even the LAPD. They were cool to this point.
LAX Protest around 1:30pm - LA Times photo
From my vantage point, protesters were everywhere. Spreading out into the streets on the lower deck, peering down from the upper deck, hanging signs and banners from the garages across the way. Protesters were everywhere and still they kept coming. Spirits were high.
I saw some black bloc types but I think they just got overwhelmed, as would have any Left groups that tried to steal the march. Traffic through the airport was finally bought to a halt not because protesters willfully adopted the tactic of blocking traffic, people really were trying to follow the cops directions to stay on the pavement or at least keep some lanes open, but the number just grew and grew and the cops' requests became a physical impossibility, as they were forced to give up one lane and then another until all traffic was brought to a halt and the only thing moving around the airport was the people of Los Angeles in protest, now easily in the tens of thousands, marching around the airport on the lower and upper decks.
a little later ABC7 photo
Around 5:00pm I decided to pack it in. I was never able to re-charge my phone so I couldn't do more recording or tweeting, and I was tired. But leaving now proved a lot more difficult than arriving. The only ground transportation that seem to be working was walking, so after an aborted effort on an overcrowded shuttle bus going nowhere, I did something else I never did before, I walked out of LAX.
On my trek out, I was joined by many of my fellow protesters of the day, and we were passing a stream of travelers and new protesters going into the airport. It seems there is only one safe footpath from LA to LAX and many discovered it this evening for the first time.
As I made my way to the bus depot for the return trip to Venice, I was tired but had the warm feeling that we're going to be alright in spite of Trump. Trump and Baghdadi of ISIS need each other and feed each other. The people standing with the banned Muslims is the worst nightmare of them both.
On just his fourth day in office, President Trump has revived the Dakota Access Pipeline. This move was nothing if not predictable, not only because it's Trump's policy to extract energy from the Earth at all costs, but because he has sizable investments both in the company building the pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, and the company that will be running the pipeline, Phillips Petroleum.
In a period in which the presidential campaign dominated the news, the one important grassroots campaign was able to break through the noise was this struggle of a coalition of Native Americans and climate activists to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline. This Anti-DAPL movement has made and will make important contributions to the battle for a better world.
But before the election, this movement was loudly critical of Hillary Clinton's refusal to speak out in support of the pipeline movement and they didn't care if her support for them would lose her more votes than it would gain her in critical states where many voters were already leaning towards Trump because of his energy and jobs claims. They put her in a no-win situation that favored Trump.
It was a cheap trick for Jill Stein to call out Hillary Clinton for not speaking out against the Dakota Access Pipeline. She wasn't trying to win Trump voters and she didn't want Clinton to win any either. She wasn't really trying to win and she didn't want Hillary to win either,
They knew Hillary Clinton voicing support for them was "the right thing to do" and they thought the election gave them the leverage to pressure her to take a public position, but the effect of this campaign was to add to the Trump-led anti-Clinton zealotry that was key to his victory. Trump knew he had no chance of growing his support beyond his 35-40% base, so his strategy was to raise her negatives. The approach adopted by the anti-DALP movement of targeting Hillary Clinton, while remaining silent about pipeline owner Donald Trump, played right into his hands.
Donald Trump became the first US President in more than 32 years to use his Inaugural Address to divide Americans along color lines, and to speak about "white" people when he said:
It is time to remember that old wisdom our soldiers will never forget: that whether we are black or brown or white, we all bleed the same red blood of patriots, we all enjoy the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American Flag.
America's most famous Klansman caught the significance of that and tweeted out:
Trump Dares to Use the "W" word. Pols will name Blacks, Browns, Jews, but not dare include white people. Trump Speech includes the W WORD!
As I explained in The problem with white people, the very concept of "white people" was invented in the 13 colonies only 300 years ago to justify the enslavement of Africans, and is an intrinsically racist term in that it awards a symbolic title of "the enlightened ones" [lightened ones] based on a light beige skin color that chromatically is very far from white.
The President's speech may have 'used the "W" word' but it was anything but enlightened. Many thought it very dark and angry, but David Duke found it right up his alley:
Trump gave an Alt-Right Speech right down the line, We couldn’t have asked for more! Donald Trump inspired us in his first speech as OUR President.
David Duke leaves no doubt about what he means by OUR President:
White America stands ready to work with President Trump and our government to rebuild America and return dignity to the White working class.
Duke called "America First""the historic slogan of the original Alt-Right,"bragging"Trump evoked my campaign slogan" because the Klan leader has used it in his past campaigns for elected office.
President Trump's speech declared war on the corrupt elite, neocons, neolibs and Jewish globalism designed to destroy White ppl and America.
What David Duke calls the "W" word is a rare one in US presidential inaugural addresses. Surprisingly, "white" has been used in reference to race in such speeches only five times before Trump, even if you count John Quincy Adams' very dubious brag that "our commerce has whitened every ocean" in 1825 while there was still a robust illegal slave trade going on from US ports.
Race would not come up again in an inaugural address for 52 years, until 1877 when, in the wake of the Civil War and Reconstruction, Rutherford B. Hayes felt the need to address the race question directly:
Let me assure my countrymen of the Southern States that it is my earnest desire to regard and promote their truest interest--the interests of the white and of the colored people both and equally--and to put forth my best efforts in behalf of a civil policy which will forever wipe out in our political affairs the color line and the distinction between North and South, to the end that we may have not merely a united North or a united South, but a united country.
Like Trump, Hayes lost the popular vote, and although he professed racial equality, he secured the 20 electoral votes he needed to win through the notorious Compromise of 1877, in which he agreed to the removal of federal troops from the South. This allowed the first generation of klansmen to overthrow many of the gains of the black reconstruction period and re-impose white terror on the former slaves.
Twelve years later, in 1889, Benjamin Harrison echoed a similar theme of racial reconciliation, although he did it without awarding some people the attributes of "white." Instead, he spoke to "those men in the South" and argued that if they:
would courageously avow and defend their real convictions they would not find it difficult, by friendly instruction and cooperation, to make the black man their efficient and safe ally, not only in establishing correct principles in our national administration, but in preserving for their local communities the benefits of social order and economical and honest government.
William Howard Taft began his 1909 Inaugural Address with words of wisdom for Donald Trump:
Anyone who has taken the oath I have just taken must feel a heavy weight of responsibility. If not, he has no conception of the powers and duties of the office upon which he is about to enter, or he is lacking in a proper sense of the obligation which the oath imposes.
Then he followed that by explaining how he saw the inaugural address:
The office of an inaugural address is to give a summary outline of the main policies of the new administration, so far as they can be anticipated.
Accordingly, he went into some detail and produced one of the longest inaugural addresses of any president. What he said on race relations alone was already two-thirds the length of Trump's entire address. In spite of this, I will quote him fully because in his inaugural address he vowed to make "the fight for 15" one of the centerpieces of his administration. What I mean by that is that he promised a vigorous enforcement of that mother of all voting rights acts, the Fifteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. He was still fighting for reconciliation almost fifty years after the Civil War [because of the length , I have made bold key passages]:
I look forward with hope to increasing the already good feeling between the South and the other sections of the country. My chief purpose is not to effect a change in the electoral vote of the Southern States. That is a secondary consideration. What I look forward to is an increase in the tolerance of political views of all kinds and their advocacy throughout the South, and the existence of a respectable political opposition in every State; even more than this, to an increased feeling on the part of all the people in the South that this Government is their Government, and that its officers in their states are their officers.
The consideration of this question can not, however, be complete and full without reference to the negro race, its progress and its present condition. The thirteenth amendment secured them freedom; the fourteenth amendment due process of law, protection of property, and the pursuit of happiness; and the fifteenth amendment attempted to secure the negro against any deprivation of the privilege to vote because he was a negro. The thirteenth and fourteenth amendments have been generally enforced and have secured the objects for which they are intended. While the fifteenth amendment has not been generally observed in the past, it ought to be observed, and the tendency of Southern legislation today is toward the enactment of electoral qualifications which shall square with that amendment. Of course, the mere adoption of a constitutional law is only one step in the right direction. It must be fairly and justly enforced as well. In time both will come. Hence it is clear to all that the domination of an ignorant, irresponsible element can be prevented by constitutional laws which shall exclude from voting both negroes and whites not having education or other qualifications thought to be necessary for a proper electorate. The danger of the control of an ignorant electorate has therefore passed. With this change, the interest which many of the Southern white citizens take in the welfare of the negroes has increased. The colored men must base their hope on the results of their own industry, self-restraint, thrift, and business success, as well as upon the aid and comfort and sympathy which they may receive from their white neighbors of the South.
There was a time when Northerners who sympathized with the negro in his necessary struggle for better conditions sought to give him the suffrage as a protection to enforce its exercise against the prevailing sentiment of the South. The movement proved to be a failure. What remains is the fifteenth amendment to the Constitution and the right to have statutes of States specifying qualifications for electors subjected to the test of compliance with that amendment. This is a great protection to the negro. It never will be repealed, and it never ought to be repealed. If it had not passed, it might be difficult now to adopt it; but with it in our fundamental law, the policy of Southern legislation must and will tend to obey it, and so long as the statutes of the States meet the test of this amendment and are not otherwise in conflict with the Constitution and laws of the United States, it is not the disposition or within the province of the Federal Government to interfere with the regulation by Southern States of their domestic affairs. There is in the South a stronger feeling than ever among the intelligent well-to-do, and influential element in favor of the industrial education of the negro and the encouragement of the race to make themselves useful members of the community. The progress which the negro has made in the last fifty years, from slavery, when its statistics are reviewed, is marvelous, and it furnishes every reason to hope that in the next twenty-five years a still greater improvement in his condition as a productive member of society, on the farm, and in the shop, and in other occupations may come.
The negroes are now Americans. Their ancestors came here years ago against their will, and this is their only country and their only flag. They have shown themselves anxious to live for it and to die for it. Encountering the race feeling against them, subjected at times to cruel injustice growing out of it, they may well have our profound sympathy and aid in the struggle they are making. We are charged with the sacred duty of making their path as smooth and easy as we can. Any recognition of their distinguished men, any appointment to office from among their number, is properly taken as an encouragement and an appreciation of their progress, and this just policy should be pursued when suitable occasion offers.
But it may well admit of doubt whether, in the case of any race, an appointment of one of their number to a local office in a community in which the race feeling is so widespread and acute as to interfere with the ease and facility with which the local government business can be done by the appointee is of sufficient benefit by way of encouragement to the race to outweigh the recurrence and increase of race feeling which such an appointment is likely to engender. Therefore the Executive, in recognizing the negro race by appointments, must exercise a careful discretion not thereby to do it more harm than good. On the other hand, we must be careful not to encourage the mere pretense of race feeling manufactured in the interest of individual political ambition.
Personally, I have not the slightest race prejudice or feeling, and recognition of its existence only awakens in my heart a deeper sympathy for those who have to bear it or suffer from it, and I question the wisdom of a policy which is likely to increase it. Meantime, if nothing is done to prevent it, a better feeling between the negroes and the whites in the South will continue to grow, and more and more of the white people will come to realize that the future of the South is to be much benefited by the industrial and intellectual progress of the negro. The exercise of political franchises by those of this race who are intelligent and well to do will be acquiesced in, and the right to vote will be withheld only from the ignorant and irresponsible of both races.
So little reference has been made to the color of US citizens in past inaugural addresses that only these three presidents mentioned it the decades that followed the Civil War when the wounds were fresh and their need to reconcile North and South, black and white was greatest. There have only been three additional presidential inaugurals that talked about white and black Americans in the last century, all Republicans who prominently used racism to win office .
Trump's was the first to reference color of US citizens since Ronald Reagan's Second Inaugural Address in 1985 when he said:
Let us resolve that we, the people, will build an American opportunity society in which all of us--white and black, rich and poor, young and old--will go forward together, arm in arm.
In 1969, at the height of the American War in Vietnam and the civil rights movement, Richard M. Nixon used his First Inaugural Address to divide Americans along color lines. But even while he was taking over the reins of the US war in Vietnam, which I have called an American Holocaust, the picture he painted of the US was a far cry from Trump's American Carnage, for one thing, he thought America was already great:
The second third of this century has been a time of proud achievement. We have made enormous strides in science and industry and agriculture. We have shared our wealth more broadly than ever. We have learned at last to manage a modern economy to assure its continued growth.
We have given freedom new reach, and we have begun to make its promise real for black as well as for white.
While these five past presidents felt a need to talk about race in their inaugural address, none of them, even Nixon and Reagan, represented the kind extreme white nationalism that now occupies the Oval Office. This 2014 tweet shows how the new president has a fundamentally racist worldview:
Sadly, because president Obama has done such a poor job as president, you won't see another black president for generations!
Leaving aside the quality of the job Obama did, why should the next African-American person running for president be judged as the same because he or she has the same skin color? Only a racist thinks like that! Not to mention the fact that many white men have done really terrible jobs as president, Republicans even, and that didn't stop the country from electing another one.
The new president has been a white racist for a long time. In 1973 the Justice Department sued the Trump organization for racial housing discrimination in Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. The doorman were instructed to turn away African-Americans looking to rent. The 26 year old Donald Trump hired Joe McCarthy's attorney, accused the media of "reverse discrimination" and accused the Justice Department of acting like "Storm troopers" and "Gestapo." Now he attacks the gov't agencies critical of him with references to "Nazi Germany." Trump hasn't changed from then till now.
He went on to seal his reputation for openly hating African-American people in my home town of Atlantic City, NJ where he as fined $200K by the casino commission in 1992 for removing African-American dealers from the floor at the request of big spenders like himself:
“When Donald and Ivana came to the casino, the bosses would order all the black people off the floor,” Kip Brown, a former employee at Trump’s Castle, told The New Yorker for a 2015 article. “It was the eighties, I was a teen-ager, but I remember it: they put us all in the back.”
The racism stemming from the enslavement of Africans by Europeans on these shores has always been the Achilles' heel and unfulfilled promise of American democracy. Now, in the most racially polarized election in living memory, US citizens who think themselves "white," including those on the fake Left who thought themselves too "lily-white" to vote for the lesser evil to stop Trump, have elected a president who is arguably the most racist in the history of this nation.
While it is not yet clear to many, this is the key dilemma facing the United States and the world coming out of the 2016 election. If we are not to suffer a world war and a holocaust much worst than the last one, we must all be resolute in our struggle against this monster. Saturday was a good start.
Postscripts
This Donald Trump attack on Hillary Clinton was widely adopted by the Green Party and others in the pro-Putin Left as their main argument that Clinton was a greater racist than Trump.
I am getting this out quickly because I haven't seen anything about this on the Left. At least NBC News, and probably most in the mainstream media, are aware and covering it up, and Trump is aware. So you should be aware. I am writing this so that more people going to protest the inauguration in DC can be prepared.
People are pouring into Washington in record numbers. Bikers for Trump are on their way. It will be a great Thursday, Friday and Saturday!
A million Bikers for Trump is something north of Fantasyland, but tens of thousands is a clear possibility. In the past they that also been associated with Lion's Guard which is a Trump oriented militia group.
Lions Guard copied its logo directly from the Nazis. It was too obvious, unlike Bikers for Trump
The Lion Guard (also known as the "Lions of Trump" or the "Lion's Guard Militia") is a paramilitary far right wing political group that was formed in 2016 in order to provide self-imposed security (outside of private security and professional law enforcement) at the rallies of Republican Party presidential nominee Donald Trump.[1][2] At its height, the group had a reported membership of just over five hundred, although boasted several hundred more followers on Facebook and Twitter.[3]
A splinter movement, known as "Bikers for Trump" began to appear in summer 2016 composed of motorcycle club members committed to provide security at Trump rallies. The motorcycle groups were closely connected with the Lion Guard movement, often sharing the same symbols and logos. The Bikers for Trump movement reported its membership in excess of 30,000 as of the summer of 2016.
Major activities
Arizona rally
The first major activity of the Lion Guard was to organize a "security patrol" at a Phoenix, Arizona rally for Donald Trump on March 19, 2016. The group claimed that the rally was in danger of being "sabotaged" and urged members to attend the rally and watch for "agitators". The group also claimed that it was "working in connection" with the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office, a claim which was later denied by county authorities.
"We do not endorse instigating fights or brawling with anti-Trump marauders. The Lion Guard seeks to identify and expose plots to attack Mr. Trump, Trump Supporters, and their rallies before they even can happen."[4]
Republican National Convention
The last known major action for the Lion Guard was its urging for members to report to the 2016 Republican National Convention, if possible with weapons due to Ohio's open carry laws and the "danger of insurrection". Due to heavy formal security at the event, it is unknown to what extent Lion Guard activists were present.
Decline
As of summer 2016, the group had been condemned by most mainstream political activist groups as a paramilitary fringe organization and was frequently compared to the Sturmabteilung (SA) of the Nazi Party.[5] Connections of the group to neo-fascism were also made, in particular due to the slogan of the Lion Guard being a quote by Benito Mussolini which Donald Trump had once posted on Twitter.
"It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep."[6]
As of August 2016, the group's Twitter account and website had become inactive.[7]
But now "Bikers for Trump" which survived that attacks on "Lions for Trump" is riding in strength towards the anti-inauguration protests in Washington, DC. The Daily Westerner is reporting:
BIKERS FOR TRUMP Vow to Defend Trump Inauguration Forming a Wall of Protection
13 January 2017
Chris Cox, Bikers for Trump founder, joined Stewart Varney on Friday to discuss plans for next week’s Inauguration.
Bikers for Trump announced plans to protect Trump and Inaugural attendees. Cox says the bikers will “form a wall of meat” if needed. More...
“Bikers for Trump” Club Plans “Wall of Meat” to Counter Violent Protesters at Inauguration
If you’re a leftist and you want to cause trouble on Inauguration Day, Bikers for Trump would like you to know that you’re going to have to go through a “wall of meat” to do it.
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Saturday, Chris Cox — the leader of the Bikers for Trump group — announced that his 5,000-strong contingent of bikers at the inauguration will protect Trump supporters from liberal protesters who get too rowdy
“In the event that we are needed, we will form a wall of meat,” Cox said. “We’ll be shoulder to shoulder with our brothers, and we’ll be toe-to-toe with anyone who’s going to break through police barriers.”
If you’re a leftist and you want to cause trouble on Inauguration Day, Bikers for Trump would like you to know that you’re going to have to go through a “wall of meat” to do it.
In an appearance on “Fox & Friends” on Saturday, Chris Cox — the leader of the Bikers for Trump group — announced that his 5,000-strong contingent of bikers at the inauguration will protect Trump supporters from liberal protesters who get too rowdy
“In the event that we are needed, we will form a wall of meat,” Cox said. “We’ll be shoulder to shoulder with our brothers, and we’ll be toe-to-toe with anyone who’s going to break through police barriers.”More...
For many years a pet peeve of mine has been the use of the terms "whitelist" and "blacklist" in the IT industry. FYI, a whitelist is a list of IP addresses that should definitely be allowed access and a blacklist is a list of IP addresses that should definitely be blocked. Since these terms are used in building Internet firewall rules, I have to use them all the time in my day job as a Linux Systems Administrator but I always felt they had a racist connotation. There are many other words and phrases that have been accused of carrying a racist connotation. Michael Coardasks in an essay "Are You - or Your Language - Racist or Not Racist?" and lists these examples:
Blackball, black-hearted, blackmail, blacklist, black market, black ops, black sheep, black hat/white hat, white lie- Need I say more?
We could also add white knight, white wedding, whitewash, a white paper and white collar to the list of phrases where "white" is used to express positive values such as courage, innocence, cleanliness, authority or position. On the other hand "black" is used to convey negative values, often related to death or bad things like the black death, black plague, black comedy and black day. I have long regarded these and numerous other phrases, like angel food cake and devil's food cake, as examples of racist symbolism bleeding over into other areas. Now I realize that I have been wrong all along about this and that it is entirely natural and logical that "white" should take on certain positive connotations and "black" certain negative connotations that are primordial and have nothing to do with race.
In order to understand why certain attributes fall organically to "black" and "white", we first must talk about color. So let's review some basic facts about light, and how it is perceived by the human eye. Visible light is electromagnetic radiation within a certain portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is detectable by the human eye. The wavelength, which is the inverse of frequency, determines the color we see the light as. Here are some familiar colors and their specs:
color
Wavelength interval
Frequency interval
Red
~ 700–635 nm
~ 430–480 THz
Orange
~ 635–590 nm
~ 480–510 THz
Yellow
~ 590–560 nm
~ 510–540 THz
Green
~ 560–520 nm
~ 540–580 THz
The seven colors of the rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet and their wavelengths range from 780 nanometers to 390 nanometers. What we call white isn't one of the colors of the rainbow, in fact white is not a primary color at all, white is an illusion.
Both "white" and "black" as well as the grey areas between them are called achromatic colors, literally, colors without color. What Wikipediasays about"white" is useful to our discussion, I will be relying on Wikipedia quite a bit to establish the basises for my argument:
An incoming light to the human eye that stimulates all its three types of color sensitive cone cells in nearly equal amounts results in white. White is one of the most common colors in nature, the color of sunlight, snow, milk, chalk, limestone and other common minerals. In many cultures white represents or signifies purity, innocence, and light, and is the symbolic opposite of black, or darkness. According to surveys in Europe and the United States, white is the color most often associated with perfection, the good, honesty, cleanliness, the beginning, the new, neutrality, and exactitude.[2]
In ancient Egypt and ancient Rome, priestesses wore white as a symbol of purity, and Romans wore a white toga as a symbol of citizenship. In the Middle Ages and Renaissance a white unicorn symbolized chastity, and a white lamb sacrifice and purity; the widows of kings dressed in white rather than black as the color of mourning.
Please note that all the above examples of positive associations with the meta-color white existed long before any people started calling themselves "white," as we shall see. It was only with the 17th century enslavement of Africans, the land grabs from people with darker colored skin, and growing capitalist assault on the natural world, that a group of Europeans who had more advanced methods of domination at their disposal (for reasons that are beyond the scope of this essay), sought to use their lighter skin color (itself a result of a need to produce vitamin D under conditions of less sunlight), to embellish all that they were doing with the symbol of purity and righteousness that had long been associated with the meta-color white, by proclaiming themselves to be "white" even though they clearly were not white. But I get ahead of myself. First let us return to the basics of human sight.
The radiation that reaches us from the sun, and other sources that mimic it, contain light from all the colors in the visible spectrum. When it is reflected by a surface that scatters it and reflects it in the same ratio as it is received from the sun, we perceived the object as white. We can see the colors that make up sunlight in the rainbow because the water droplets between the sun and the observer refract the light differently according to wavelength and allow us to glimpse its constituent parts.
As this blowup makes clear, there are no white pixels in a color screen, all the colors displayed by the monitor are generated by pixels of three primary colors, red, green and blue. When they are all turned on, we see the screen as white. When they are all turned off, we see the screen as black.
This perception of the combined colors as white has some important results for human vision. Since water is clear or colorless, like many other substances in the natural world, it appears white when it takes on a structure that defuses or scatters the light that hits it, such as in snow or clouds. This dynamic also accounts for the white color of pure sugar or salt, diamonds and all sorts of foams and crystals. In many of these cases, whiteness can correctly be taken as an indication of purity or lack of contamination. Of course all this has nothing to do with race or even the human social condition. It is the result of the human perception of the working out of certain natural laws, but it does impart a certain sense of purity or goodness to the meta-color white.
Black is not a real color either. Black is simply the absence of light of any color. Your screen doesn't have any black pixels either. To represent black, all the pixels are left off. Black also has some negative connotations given to it by the natural world. In most of its states, pure carbon reflects no light and appears black to the human eye. This means things damaged or killed by fire appear black. Outside the body, dried blood appears black, as does blood in the feces, never a good sign. Many other death products of carbon based man fades to black.
Fade to black is used in films to end a scene as the night ends the day and so mimics a pattern familiar to us. It's no accident that we used the same word "day" to symbolize both a single rotation of the Earth in front of the Sun, and to symbolize that roughly half of the rotation in which we face the Sun, that part which isn't night. Also given our focus on daylight activity, it's also quite natural that sunlight and white come to symbolize beginning or birth and darkness or black come to represent ending or death.
Probably most important in shaping our primordial attitude towards white and black is this difference between day and night and the fact that, compared to many other animals, humans just don't see very well at night. Wikipedia simply says:
Humans have poor night vision compared to many animals.
We lack many of the structures, like a reflective coating behind the retina, that allow those that would hunt us to see much better at night than we do. What we lose in night vision is more than made up for by having eyes that are sensitive to colors. Most animals can't see colors.
Because of our poor night vision, humans are not nocturnal hunters or gatherers. We feel safest during the day. Night has always been the period of greatest danger, a time when we retreat to whatever security and shelter we can manage to await the rising sun and our next day's activities. These are all natural conditions of human existence that pre-date and have nothing to do with race that have irrevocably imparted to the meta-color white certains positive attributes as a symbol for sunlight and the meta-color black certain negative attributes because it symbolizes the darkness.
As we enter the make-or-break period for this experiment called humanity, it is important to remember it has been a very long time in the making, so some of these associations are not only prehistoric, they are pre-human. Scientific American published a special issue on human evolution, January 2009. Using the latest research in that field, it traced our first hominid ancestors back to the Sahelanthropus tchadensis that lived in Chad more than 7 million years ago. Some scientists count 23 separate hominid species on the road to us, and as close as 50,000 years ago, there were still four distinct hominids vying for the top prize, H. neanderthalensis, H. erectus, H. floresiensis, and us, H. sapiens, whose oldest known fossils were found in Omo, Ethiopia. All these were far from our Primate origins, all had big brains, could walk upright, and use tools, but Scientific American reports that Homo Sapiens were:
The only hominid to colonize every continent and the first to systematically use symbols.
So it may well be the case that it wasn't simply our big brains, ability to walk upright, and use tools that made us the Primates that went on to dominate the planet. Most probably it has been our ability to use symbols to organize and act upon our world that sets us apart from all the species that came before us.
Now that we have established the importance of symbols in organizing our world, and identified some of the organic reasons "white" and "black" are such powerful symbols, we are now ready to examine the history of how one part of humanity became "white," while others, by implication, became "black."
The history of "white" people.
Our official history would have us believe that white people are responsible for many of the early developments and civilizations. They will tell you that white people created the great ancient Greek and Roman civilizations, white people circumnavigated the globe and discovered the New World. This is fake history. Aristotle, Caesar and Jesus weren't white, neither was Columbus or Magellan. None of these people would have described themselves as white people. They saw themselves as representing regions or nations we now think of as Greece, Italy, Palestine, Portugal, or Spain and, to be sure, they knew they had a lighter complexion than many they met in their travels, but that didn't make them white people because that category hadn't crystallized as a category of people variously distinguished by skin color and origin. Modern racism had yet to be invented. Christopher Columbus wasn't even an Italian in his day, he was a proud citizen of the Republic of Genoa. The category of "white people" came alive only in the 17th century with the adoption of racial slavery. Since then all these Europeans have been posthumously awarded the title of "white person." According to Wikipedia, the Ancient Greeks weren't white:
Classicist James Dee states "the Greeks do not describe themselves as "white people"—or as anything else because they had no regular word in their color vocabulary for themselves."[3] People's skin color did not carry useful meaning; what mattered is where they lived.[4]
From Wikipedia, we learn that the concept of a white race is a surprisingly recent one:
The contemporary usage of "white people" or a "white race" as a large group of (mainly European) populations contrasting with "black", American Indian, "colored" or non-white originated in the 17th century.
Obviously, light skinned people had inhabited parts of Europe for a long time before that, so it's no accident that the "white race" was invented just when these Europeans were first embarking on their imperial mission. The Wikipedia entry for "White People" gives us a brief history:
The term "white race" or "white people" entered the major European languages in the later 17th century, originating with the racialization of slavery at the time, in the context of the Atlantic slave trade[11]and the enslavement of native peoples in the Spanish Empire.[12] It has repeatedly been ascribed to strains of blood, ancestry, and physical traits, and was eventually made into a subject of scientific research, which culminated in scientific racism, which was later widely repudiated by the scientific community. According to historian Irene Silverblatt, "Race thinking … made social categories into racial truths."[12] Bruce David Baum, citing the work of Ruth Frankenberg, states, "the history of modern racist domination has been bound up with the history of how European peoples defined themselves (and sometimes some other peoples) as members of a superior 'white race'."[13] Alastair Bonnett argues that 'white identity', as it is presently conceived, is an American project, reflecting American interpretations of race and history.[14]
The thoroughgoing links of the concept of a "white race" to imperialism are revealed as much by where it was invented as by when it was invented. It was invented where slavery was being implemented. Back to Wikipedia:
In the British colonies in North America and the Caribbean, the designation English or Christian was initially used in contrast to Native Americans or Africans. Early appearances of white race or white people in the Oxford English Dictionary begin in the seventeenth century.[3] Historian Winthrop Jordan reports that, "throughout the [thirteen] colonies the terms Christian, free, English, and white were … employed indiscriminately" in the seventeenth century as proxies for one another.[22] In 1680, Morgan Godwyn "found it necessary to explain" to English readers that "in Barbados, 'white' was 'the general name for Europeans.'"[23] Several historians report a shift towards greater use of white as a legal category alongside a hardening of restrictions on free or Christian blacks.[24] White remained a more familiar term in the American colonies than in Britain well into the 1700s, according to historian Theodore Allen.[23]
The terms "white people" and "white race" were used first in the colonies and only later in Europe and the rest of the world, so it can truly be said that Europeans came to the Americas and sent "white people" back. Again, from Wikipedia
Before the Industrial Revolutions in Europe whiteness may have been associated with social status. Aristocrats may have had less exposure to the sun and therefore a pale complexion may have been associated with status and wealth.[141] This may be the origin of "blue blood" as a description of royalty, the skin being so lightly pigmented that the blueness of the veins could be clearly seen.[142] The change in the meaning of white that occurred in the colonies (see above) to distinguish Europeans from non-Europeans did not apply to 'home' countries (England, Ireland, Scotland, and Wales). Whiteness therefore retained a meaning associated with social status.
The "white race" was first created on the backs of African slaves and went on to firmly establish itself as a fake category on the strength and growth of western imperialism, but being an opportunistic rather than scientific classification, it hasn't always been clear just who is "white." Again from Wikipedia:
By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. According to John Tehranian, among those not considered white at some points in American history have been: the Germans, Greeks, white Hispanics, Arabs, Iranians, Afghans, Irish, Italians, Jews, Slavs and Spaniards.[155] Still today the relationship between some ethnic groups and whiteness remains complex. In particular, some Jewish and Arab individuals both self-identify and are considered as part of the White American racial category, but others with the same ancestry feel they are not white nor are they perceived as white by American society.[156][157][158]
The meaning of "black people" has also been variable with time and place, generally with "white people" doing the defining. Wikipedia had this to say about "black people:"
Different societies apply differing criteria regarding who is classified as "black", and these social constructs have also changed over time. In a number of countries, societal variables affect classification as much as skin color, and the social criteria for "blackness" vary. For example, in North America the term black people is not necessarily an indicator of skin color or ethnic origin, but is instead a socially based racial classification related to being African American, with a family history mainly associated with institutionalized slavery. In the United Kingdom, "black" was historically equivalent with "person of color", a general term for non-European peoples. In South Africa and Latin America, mixed-race people are generally not classified as "black". In other regions such as Australasia, settlers applied the term "black" or it was used by local populations with different histories and ancestral backgrounds.
There are also extremely important and very deep psychological forces that are put to work in the efforts by one group of people to dominate another when the color card is played as it has been by Caucasians. I have not really touched on these, but they may be the most powerful way this illusion of whiteness binds Caucasians to a continuing pattern of racism, world domination, and destruction. Joel Kovel, in his White Racism: A Psychohistory, 1970, goes into great detail. It is a must read on this subject. From p.232:
Racism abstracts the color of the living body into non-colors of extreme value, black and white. Within this organization black represents the shade of evil, the devil's aspect, night, separation, loneliness, sin, dirt, excrement, the inside of the body; and white represents the mark of good, the token of innocence, purity, cleanliness, spirituality, virtue, hope.
From this we can see that the very terms "white race" and "white people" have inherently racist content. Therefore racism can never be completely defeated before the use of these terms is abandoned.
From here we can proceed to some preliminary definitions and conclusions:
White supremacy is then, at its core, the false belief by Caucasian people of European descent that they are "white" - meaning they share in the natural attributes of "white" like "pure", "good", "ideal", "the standard", "righteous" - that they, owing to lower level of melanins in their skin, share in these symbolic meanings of "white" that others don't, making them the chosen ones.
While the skin color differences between the European colonizers and the people of the South may have provided the original impetus for the "white" and "black" categorization, the adoption of the symbolism of "white" by Europeans at the beginning of the imperialist period has been used not only as a sign of their righteousness in dominating and raping the thereby newly created "non-white" people, it has been used as a sign of their righteousness in dominating and raping the entire planet. Therefore we can conclude that the problems inherent in a group of people being called "white" is not merely a race problem. It would be a problem even if there were no other races.This attitude of Whiteness has been invoked not just against the "black people of the Earth" but against the Earth itself.
White chauvinism therefore is the practice of white supremacy, not just towards the excluded peoples, but towards the entire excluded natural world. It underlines and legitimizes the operations of capitalism not just in exploiting "people of color," but in ruthlessly exploiting the resources of the Earth as well.
Racism is the application of white chauvinism to people.
White nationalism is the derivative belief that white people constitute a nation. This actually brings the mythology around full circle since the original object of the creation of the "white race" was to forge a number of European nationalities into a new trans-national grouping better suited to imperialism.
Also note, This is not a "rose by any other name" type of situation. The positive symbolism of "white" is primordial and immutable, so the contradiction cannot be resolved by pretending it doesn't unfairly award that positive symbolism to a people based on skin color. It can only be resolved by depreciating the label "white" as applied to any group of people.
Executive Summary: The use of the word "white" to describe a specific ethnic or racial group is itself racist and must be abolished to end racism and save the planet. White Power is unhealthy for children and other living things.
