Remarks:

I am not quite sure what this song is about, with pimps swinging axes and the lighting of soul flames, but it still sounds good all these years later. It sounded much better back in ancient times, like in the 1980s, when I listened to it on my sister’s record player: you turn over the record and this was the first song on side two of “The Wild, the Innocent and the East Street Shuffle” (1973). After saying “Puerto Rican Jane” a million times (well, twice) and then some good electric guitar playing it all dies away and all that is left is just the piano, playing almost one note at a time. And then right after – right after – that very last note that you hear on this YouTube video, it bursts into “Rosalita”. It is like Christmas or sex: the anticipation is half the joy.

Lyrics:

Spanish Johnny drove in from the underworld last night
With bruised arms and broken rhythm in a beat-up old Buick
But dressed just like dynamite
He tried sellin’ his heart to the hard girls over on Easy Street
But they sighed “Johnny it falls apart so easy and you know hearts these days are cheap”
And the pimps swung their axes and said “Johnny you’re a cheater.”
Well the pimps swung their axes and said “Johnny you’re a liar”
And from out of the shadows came a young girl’s voice said: “Johnny don’t cry”
Puerto Rican Jane, oh won’t you tell me what’s your name.
I want to drive you down to the other side of town where paradise ain’t so crowded, there’ll be action goin’ down on Shanty Lane tonight
All them golden-heeled fairies in a real bitch fight
Pull .38s and kiss the girls good night

Oh good night, it’s alright Jane
Now let them black boys in to light the soul flame
We may find it out on the street tonight baby
Or we may walk until the daylight maybe

Well like a cool Romeo he made his moves, oh she looked so fine
Like a late Juliet she knew he’d never be true but then she really didn’t mind
Upstairs a band was playin’, the singer was singin’ something about goin’ home
She whispered, “Spanish Johnny, you can leave me tonight but just don’t leave me alone”

And Johnny cried “Puerto Rican Jane, word is down the cops have found the vein”
Oh them barefoot boys they left their homes for the woods
Them little barefoot street boys they say homes ain’t no good
They left the corners, threw away all their switchblade knives and kissed each other good-bye

Johnny was sittin’ on the fire escape watchin’ the kids playin’ down the street
He called down “Hey little heroes, summer’s long but I guess it ain’t very sweet around here anymore”
Janey sleeps in sheets damp with sweat, Johnny sits up alone and watches her dream on, dream on
And the sister prays for lost souls, then breaks down in the chapel after everyone’s gone

Jane moves over to share her pillow but opens her eyes to see Johnny up and putting his clothes on
She says “Those romantic young boys
All they ever want to do is fight”
Those romantic young boys
They’re callin’ through the window
“Hey Spanish Johnny, you want to make a little easy money tonight?”
And Johnny whispered:

Good night, it’s all tight Jane
I’ll meet you tomorrow night on Lover’s Lane
We may find it out on the street tonight baby
Or we may walk until the daylight maybe

Oh, good night, it’s all right Jane
I’m gonna meet you tomorrow night on Lover’s Lane
Oh, we may find it out on the street tonight baby
Or we may walk until the daylight maybe

Good night, it’s all right Jane
I’ll meet you tomorrow night on Lover’s Lane
Now we may find it out on the, on the street tonight baby
Or we may have to walk until the morning light maybe

See also:

• Bruce Springsteen: Thunder Road
• Of dusky maidens

“The Ascent of Man” (1973) was a PBS series, Jacob Bronowski’s take on the history of science and invention. I saw it in the 1980s on the cable channel of the City College of New York. I would love to see it again. In the meantime I will have to make do with the book, which I picked up the other day for two dollars at a used book sale. I will do a chapter a week:

Man is part animal, part angel. To call him just an animal or just an ape would be a misleading understatement. Unlike other animals, man has an imagination. He can imagine the future and create it:

Every animal leaves traces of what it was; man alone leaves traces of what he created.

The gazelles for all their beauty and grace can never leave the grasslands of Africa. Should the grasslands ever disappear one day, they will disappear along with it. They are custom-made for a particular place. Man is not. Man got his start in those very same grasslands but has spread across the world, even to the cold and ice of the far north.

Among the multitude of animals which scamper, fly, burrow and swim around us, man is the only one who is not locked into his environment. His imagination, his reason, his emotional subtlety and toughness, make it possible for him not to accept the environment but to change it.

Men in the far north have white skin, not black. But it was not white skin that allowed them to live there: it was fire. Man has spread over the earth too quickly for difference of race to matter much. Even more to the point, man is able to make up for his physical shortcomings faster than nature can. Instead of growing fur like a bear, for example, he makes clothes.

In fact, while man has changed faster than almost any other animal over the past two million years, the physical changes in his body were driven mainly by changes in his brain. For example, as he was able to make tools to kill and cut, his teeth got smaller.

Some milestones:

• 2,000,00 BC: Australopithecus africanus. He could walk upright. That freed his hands to make and use tools, which in turn allowed him to eat meat. Eating meat meant less time spent eating and more time for other things. They took care of not just their own children but even those whose parents had died. He stood 1.2 metres tall (four feet) and had a brain about half the size of ours.
• 400,000 BC: Homo erectus: discovers how to make and control fire. He probably had language too, which allowed for better hunting. Spreads as far as China, Europe and Java.
• 18,000 BC: Homo sapiens: way better tools, like harpoons. Art for the first time.

Only man creates art. It shows that man can imagine things that he does not see before him; it means he can think about the future.

See also:

• guns, germs and steel
• The white inventor argument

The white lens is that through which white Americans see the world. It is like a pair of glasses nearly all of them wear. It keeps them from seeing the world as it is, allowing them to feel comfortable with their privileged position in it. It is something that Nezua the Unapologetic Mexican writes about at length.

Nezua says American society is like a train passing through a land full of dead bodies. When white people, or anyone with a white lens, looks out the window they do not see the bodies – just beautiful countryside. Those without a white lens see the dead bodies.

You do not have to be white to wear a white lens: it comes as part of the brainwashing you get from school and television in America – no matter what your colour. It makes you to look at the world in a way that suits white rule, not you:

1. It makes you see white as right and people of colour as no good.
2. It makes you seek personal success within a racist society as it stands.
3. It makes you give up parts of yourself, like your culture and history, without looking back.

If you have ever looked at your face and thought your nose was too wide, your lips too big, your skin too dark or your hair no good, you were most likely looking at yourself through a white lens.

Very few white people even notice the white lens – they think they are seeing the world as it is and not in some twisted form.

Most people of colour, on the other hand, notice that something is not quite right, though it may take them years to notice it and years more to undo its damaging effects. Some never notice the lens, like Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas and Michelle Malkin.

The white lens accounts for:

• Why whites can be racist without even knowing it.
• Why whites do not see their own race, just that of others.
• Why whites think people of colour are “oversensitive”.
• Why Don Imus called the women basketball players at Rutgers “nappy-headed hoes” – because that is how they look through the white lens.
• Why passing for white does not work for people of colour in the long run – because they are not seeing or being their true selves, even if they seem “successful”.

Nezua says he has nothing against whites – just the white lens. That allows him to see whites as brainwashed innocents.

I like how the white lens ties together much of what I have been writing about lately: the delusional whiteness of Barbara Bush, the poor reading skills of Roissy, the single story, the just world doctrine, how whites are not neutral like they think, etc.

But I do not completely agree with Nezua: I think whites do see the dead bodies out of the corner of their eye. Because their benevolent cluelessness often seems to be an act.

See also:

• The Unapologetic Mexican: The White Lens
  • La Lente Blanca Entries – his series on the white lens, some of it excellent, particularly his post about growing up half-Mexican in white suburbia and Don Imus.

Because this idea strikes at one of the main themes of this blog, it is a portal into a good share of it:

• white gaze – same idea but in a form that is too weak
• Some examples of the white lens in action:
  • affecting white people:
    • The Roissy Syndrome
    • White is not neutral
    • the single story
    • The Barbara Bush Award for Deluded Whiteness
    • just world doctrine
    • black people as monkeys
    • How to tell if a commenter is white
      • How to argue like a white racist
  • affecting people of colour (internalized racism):
    • colourism
    • skin lightening
    • good hair
    • the doll experiment
    • acting white
• What the white lens does not seem to account for:
  • What this blog has taught me about white people
  • Most white people are not benevolently clueless
  • white guilt
  • growing up white
  • covering
• white people – general topics:
  • white privilege
  • Apple-pie America
  • How white people think

Chief Wahoo (1947- ), pictured right, is the  American Indian chief who is the trademark of the Cleveland Indians, an American baseball team. Some say it is racist. The NAACP, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and most Native American leaders want him dropped.

Even the name “Indians” is based on a racist stereotype: “In place of the Naps”, said the Cleveland Leader in 1915 when the name was changed, “we’ll have the Indians, on the warpath all the time, and eager for scalps to dangle at their belts.”

In 1928 they started wearing a picture of an Indian on their uniforms. In 1947 along came Chief Wahoo.

Compare Chief Wahoo to the trademark for Coon Chicken Inn, which comes from the same period in history and was still in use as late as the 1950s. Then compare it to the current trademark of another sports team which uses an Indian image, the Chicago Blackhawks:

It is bad enough to use an Indian image at all in a country that has practised genocide against them. As the New York Daily News pointed out, it would be like a football team in Germany calling themselves the Hamburg Jews or something. But on top of that comes this image of Chief Wahoo.

After all, what if the Cleveland team had called itself the Cleveland Coons and used a coon image like the one above? And what if fans came to the game in blackface? Who would put up with it? Yet some Cleveland fans come to the game in redface:

According to a Sports Illustrated opinion poll from 2002 most people see Indian names and images on sports team as not being racist:

Although most Native American activists and tribal leaders consider Indian team names and mascots offensive, neither Native Americans in general nor a cross section of U.S. sports fans agree.

It is unclear where Sports Illustrated found enough Native Americans to poll or why whites. who make up most of “a cross section of U.S. sport fans”, would be a good judge of how offensive it is.

Some point out that white people are used on trademarks too, like the one for the New England Patriots:

How this is not like Chief Wahoo:

1. It is a picture with some dignity.
2. It was presumably created by a white person.
3. It is not one of the few images of white people that are seen nationwide. Unlike Native Americans, whites have the power to create whatever images they want of themselves and have them seen all across the country.
4. Whites are mostly not seen as members of a race, as “white” people – but just as people. That is not true for people of colour in America.

Cleveland should go back to what they had before: a stylized “C”. After all, letters are good enough for the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees, who, unlike Cleveland, have won a World Series or two within the past 60 years.

Thanks to alwaysright101 for suggesting this topic.

See also:

• The history of the Coon Chicken Inn – at the excellent Jim Crow Museum.
• race and representation:
  • blackface
    • Vogue does blackface
    • yellowface: David Carradine
  • stereotype
    • The coon stereotype
  • The blackness of American television
  • video vixens
  • Whites are not neutral / white gaze
• Race in America
  • genocide
• Other posts on Native Americans:
  • The Sioux today
  • The Delaware
  • growing up Native American

Warning: As in all things Roissy, this is not a gentle, PG-13 sort of post:

Roissy in DC, a white man, told us in “Interracial Loving” about his first time with a black woman. It was like watching a train wreck.

One commenter, Haroldmaude, a black woman, comments in part:

Wow. I thought my humorous racial comments and viewpoints were always in danger of being misconstrued. And I really want to believe you’re being a bit light-hearted with this nostalgic post, but you’re not, are you? As a black woman, thanks for fulfilling the stereotypes about how/why white men date black women: it’s exotic; she’s probably used to really big black penises; a lot of other black women will find me attractive; and though the black men hate me for taking ‘one of their own’, they RESPECT me for pulling it off (???). Wow. Wow. Wow. Actually, those looks from the black men were probably more about, “There’s only one reason why he’s with her.”

This went right over Roissy’s head. He either did not understand it or chose not to. Even after she pointed out how he was stereotyping blacks he went right on doing it – while saying he was not!

For example, about stereotyping black women as exotic he says:

you’re barking up the wrong tree if you think you can guilt me into some contrite backpedaling. homey don’t play that. of course she was exotic at the time. she was my first. the first asian i had was also exotic. hell, the first time i kissed a girl was exotic. if it’s the word that ties your panties in a knot, try substituting “novel”.

Not getting it. It is like watching a troll in control of his own blog.

But it gets worse. Here is what he has to say about his stereotyping black women as being used to really big black penises:

a fair assumption on my part as most people date within their race for the majority of their dating lives. luckily for me, i’m no slouch in the big penis department.

Still not getting it.

I later commented:

Roissy: A very interesting yet sickening account. You need to reread haroldmaude’s comments with care.

That was putting it nicely.

Government figures show that white Americans have higher reading scores than blacks. But then why is it that blacks easily understand my posts while some whites have such a hard time?

Round about comment #15 some white person will do just what Roissy did: state that I am wrong while proving I am right by his very comment.

I used to think I was not being clear enough, that if I used just the right words then scales would drop from the eyes of white people. But that assumes that racism is just a simple misunderstanding, a set of bad ideas, like stereotypes, that can be replaced with better ones. Sadly, it is not that simple.

See also:

• Roissy in DC: Interracial Loving
• The whiteness of Roger Ebert
• What this blog has taught me about white people
  • Why whites are blind to their own racism
  • Are most white people benevolently clueless
• stereotype
  • Of dusky maidens
  • exotic women
  • Jezebel stereotype
  • the black buck stereotype

“Whites are individuals” is a common argument brought up by whites. It is part of a set of closely related arguments:

• Whites are individuals. There are all kinds – bikers, soccer moms, coal miners, business men, goths, etc – so you cannot make general statements about them.
• To make a general statement about whites is itself racist. It is stereotyping them. It is hypocritical. It is seeing them according to skin colour and that is racist.
• The “all whites” argument: “All whites are not like that”. They bring this up even when no one said all whites were anything. But that is how they heard it. It amounts a straw man argument.

These arguments seem to be driven by two things:

1. “Blacks are racist too.”
2. They are uncomfortable with being called white because they have been taught not to be race conscious.

Just for the record, I do know that whites are individuals. I live in America, a country that is mostly white: I work with them, they are on television and presented as individuals with their own storylines and not as racist stereotypes or even as too-good-to-be-true supporting characters.

On the other hand….

It does seem like most of them, like at least 60%, at least in the Greater New York Metropolitan Area, all went to the same secret course on whiteness. They do act in certain common ways, ways that support racism.

And, based on comments on this blog, this stuff extends well beyond New York. In fact it seems to go clear across the country and into Canada, and, in a slightly different form, into Britain and South Africa.

I have never been to the Southside or Oakland, but they sound strangely familiar to me. Another sign that the racism of white people in New York is not just a New York thing.

And having seen the Maori in New Zealand and the Sioux in South Dakota, I know full well that this has surprisingly little to do with the faults of black people – or the Maoris or Sioux – and everything to do with how white people are. Whites do not like to hear that, but that does not mean it is not true.

And there is no way I can talk about white people – or any subject – without making general statements. It would be nice if I could back them all up with studies, but this does not seem to be a well-studied field.

Of course I am quite capable of making racist statements. But to say that every general statement about whites is necessarily racist makes it impossible to talk about how racist they are!

The most maddening part is that it is white people who draw the line between themselves and everyone else. They are the ones who apply the colour line and all the injustice that goes with it. They are making themselves white – and yet they do not want to be seen as white!

See also:

• How to argue like a white racist
• stereotype
  • the single story
• The r-word
• race conscious
• white people
• Maori
• Sioux
• How to help end racism

The phrase “guns, germs and steel” comes from Jared Diamond’s 1997 book of that name. He calls it “a short history of everyone for the last 13,000 years”. It answers the question of how whites got on top. He says our destiny is written not in our genes but in our geography.

Diamond went to New Guinea to see its birds. He made friends there and one of them, Yali, asked him why whites were so rich:

Why is it that you white people developed so much cargo and brought it to New Guinea, but we black people had little cargo of our own?

Diamond ruled out intelligence: New Guineans were “more intelligent, more alert, more expressive, and more interested in things and people around them than the average European or American is.”

He also ruled out culture and politics: those things are always changing and have little long-term effect across thousands of years.

That leaves him with geography and biology: with the lands and seas, the plants and animals that make up the world.

Not all places are created equal:

• Of the 13 kinds of large animals that are easy for man to tame and control, 12 live in Eurasia: cows, pigs, goats, horses, camels, etc. Only the llama is missing. Men do not ride zebras, for example, because they are too wild to be tamed. Places like Australia, New Guinea and North America had no large animals that could be tamed – just dogs.
• Of the grains that are easy to plant and store, again most are found in Eurasia. Australia had none at all!
• Eurasia goes mainly from east to west. So plants and animals that work in one part of Eurasia work well elsewhere. That is way less true for Africa and the Americas which run from north to south.

This meant that civilization could spread more widely and deeply in Eurasia than elsewhere. Civilization is based on being able to produce more food than you need, freeing up human labour for other things.

So the world’s four largest civilizations are found in Eurasia in a chain that stretches from east to west: China, India, the Middle East and Europe.

It was just a matter of time before one of these invented gunpowder and ocean-going ships and be able to take over the world. It was China that invented those things, yet it was Europe that took over. Why?

Because Europe’s geography makes empires rare. There are just too many mountains and rivers. So while in China the emperor could (and did) outlaw building ocean-going ships and not suffer in the short term, no country in Europe could get away with that.

But genes do matter in one way: disease. From living with cows for so long  most whites had built-in defences against smallpox - but not against malaria. That made it easy for them to take over and stay in North America (where smallpox played a big part in wiping out the American Indians), but not in most of Africa.

See also:

• The white inventor argument
• sexual selection and race – also based on Jared Diamond’s views
• white people
• Steve Sailer

Remarks:

I had completely forgotten about this song because it does not appear on any of my Janet Jackson albums. Lisa Keith is the lead singer. It “sounds” like a Janet Jackson song – like maybe something towards the end of “Rhythm Nation 1814″ (1989) – because it was produced by Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis at about the same time.

This song reached #7 on the R&B charts. You may have heard it being sampled in other songs.

Lyrics:

Making love
in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me.

Making love all alone,
I hear the rain on my window.

It’s just a little thing,
but it means so much to me.

Our bodies together,
while the rain plays a melody.

Every raindrop makes think of you.
(Wishing you were close to me)

There is nothing that I’d rather do than…
Making love in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me.

When we’re done – all alone,
I hear the rain on my window.

When it’s stormy outside,
It’s warm in my heart,
with you in my arms.

And when your away from me,
I wish it would rain,
’cause its always the same

Every raindrop makes think of you.
(Wishing you were close to me)

There is nothing that I’d rather do than…
Making love in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me.
(I can’t believe)

When I’m here all alone,
I hear the rain on my window.
(On my window)

Making love in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me.

Making love all alone,
I hear the rain on my window.
(On my window, I hear the raindrops fall)

Every raindrop makes think of you.
(Wishing you were close to me)

There is nothing that I’d rather do than…
(Nothing that I’d rather do than)
Making love in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me.
(Making love. oohh making love)

When we’re here all alone,
I hear the rain on my window.
(On my window, I hear it rain)

Making love in the rain,
I can’t believe the joy it brings me
(ooohhhh, yeah)

All alone I hear the rain.
(I hear the rain)

My love here comes the rain.
My love here comes the rain.
My love here comes the rain.
My love here comes the rain.

I read a post by Wildflower that got me to thinking: “Is It Neutral and Normal Because It’s White?”

White Americans as a whole do not have a neutral point of view. They do not see the world in a fair, open-minded way like they think.

This should be as plain as day, it should go without saying. Not so.

I will go further: most whites have a dishonest, self-serving, closed-minded, narrow way of looking at the world that is far from neutral, far from fair, far from objective. They are more interested in maintaining a false image of themselves as a kind and good and just people than, say, the truth.

White Americans are born with perfectly good minds, just as good as anyone else’s. Most have at least 14 years of schooling. America is a remarkably open society – it was before the Internet came and now it is even more so. There is every reason to expect them to be the most open-minded, knowledgeable people in all of history.

The trouble comes because of their power:

1. It makes them believe they have all the answers - so why listen to others? Why care what goes on in other countries? Why take people of colour or other cultures seriously? Why even take voices from their own past seriously?
2. It fills the world with their own voice – with television shows, news, Hollywood films, magazines, blogs, etc. They can barely hear anyone else but themselves.
3. It makes them morally blind - they turn a blind eye to the evil done in their name.
4. It makes them think the world is juster and less screwed up than it is – not just because they are morally blind but also because in their corner of the world things are fine. Most seem to believe in just world doctrine, which is hardly the way the world works.
5. It separates them from other people – most live in an all-white world and rarely hear forthright, honest opinions seriously defended that are far from their own except of a narrow political sort. It also makes them blind to their own skin colour so that they think they are raceless, that their race does not affect how they see things.
6. It allows them to write their own history – and fill it with lies and half-truths, putting themselves at the centre, making themselves its heroes, making themselves what all of history was leading up to!

In short, there is little to keep them honest. They believe what they want to believe. Not just in regard to history, race or foreign affairs, but even personal morals. In 1900, for example, abortion, divorce, illegitimacy and same-sex marriage were all beyond the pale and had been for at least 1500 years. But now?

Most do not seek out other voices from other times and other places, not even from people of colour from their own time and place. And so in spite of all their money and power they live in a very narrow world.

See also:

• Wildflower: Is It Neutral and Normal Because It’s White?
  • which was partly in reply to a post of mine: Are most white people benevolently clueless
• How racism helps and hurts white people
• What this blog has taught me about white people
• the single story
• just world doctrine
• racelessness – the opposite of race conscious
• white gaze

The white inventor argument says that we know white people are better than everyone else because of all their wonderful inventions.

The argument has three main uses:

1. To prove that whites are better – and the world better off despite whatever racism they may have practised.
2. To change the subject. Blacks hate this argument and will jump on it, pushing aside whatever it was they were arguing about before. They are ready with their long list of so-called black inventions, stuff about the stoplight and Egypt or something. Not that you care – you just wanted to change the subject from whatever uncomfortable thing they were saying about whites.
3. To point out that x would not even be possible without white people. So like if they are arguing about how racist a film is, just point out that film was invented by whites, so shut up already.

When people bring up something bad that whites did, like the slave trade, you quickly point out how other people have done it too, like Arab traders, how it is “natural”. People have such a bad habit of overlooking Historical Context! But with the white inventor argument you can take advantage of this: act as if whites invented everything, as if it is an uncommon gift that the whole world has been blessed with through the overflowing kindness of white people.

What is wrong with this argument:

1. Doing something good does not excuse doing something bad. More particularly, inventing x does not give you or anyone else the right to misuse x. The invention of television, for example, does not excuse using it to push stereotypes about blacks.
2. If inventions “prove” one part of mankind is better than all the rest, then the Chinese and Egyptians have a way better claim than whites.

The four inventions that made possible the rise of whites to world power were all Chinese: gunpowder, the compass, paper and printing.

The Egyptians invented civilization itself along with stuff like writing, calendars, irrigation and so on. They made huge pyramids that no has been able to match. Egypt was the most advanced part of the world for over 2,000 years – twice as long as even China.

True, most of the important inventions of the past few hundred years were made by white people. But that is only because they have been on top during that time. If it was because white people are born with more brains, then white people would have been on top throughout human history – instead of just a fifth of it.

If you assume that the largest city will tend to be in the most advanced part of world, then you can say how many years different people have been on top:

• 2072 Egyptian
• 974 Chinese
• 364 Roman
• 360 Sumerian/Babylonian
• 359 Persian
• 285 Greek
• 281 Arab
• 140 Anglo

Anglo power – British and American – is fresh in our minds, but it is merely the latest chapter in the book of history. And that is the Historical Context that this argument forgets.

See also:

• Largest cities through history
• How to argue like a white racist
  • The Arab trader argument
  • “Go back to Africa”
• Mighty Whitey – where would people of colour be without those good, kind white people?
  • We darkies were just born bad
• white people
  • white gaze – which puts whites at the centre of history, even during their dark ages!
• bits of history
  • Ancient Egypt
  • Babylonia
  • Roman Empire
  • Byzantine Empire
  • Arabs
  • Persians
  • China
  • Anglos
    • British Empire
    • American Empire

Beverly Tatum is a child psychologist who wrote “Why Are All The Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?” (2003, updated). Despite the title it is not about self-segregation – though she does answer that question. It is about how race affects growing up in America.

Being black herself, her main concern is black children and that is where the book shines, but she covers the other races too: white, Asian, Hispanic (counts as a race in this book) and even Native American and Middle Easterners (who are becoming racialized as a dangerous other). She covers biracial or mixed race children too. Even if you are “Other” it is worth reading because it turns out that what matters most is whether or not you are white.

She lays out the stage models that psychologists have come up with for how people of different races come to terms with their own colour. Some models are more solid and worked out than others. She points out their limits. She does not assume a background in psychology or act as if these models are the way, the truth and the light – just the best working answers by those who study such things.

The black stage model is the one that is most worked out and best supported by studies. It is surprisingly good:  you see how the things in your life that you thought were just accidents (like how some white friends from grade school fall away in middle school for no apparent reason) or just you (a sudden, consuming interest in black authors at a particular age) are not chance events but follow a particular pattern driven by race.

The white stage model seemed like something from another world. I am surprised anyone worked it out, to tell you the truth, since whites seem to think of themselves as raceless, as if their race does not affect them. But in any case, that model is next to useless anyway because few whites get beyond stage one – the stage where they think they are colour-blind and that America is fair. But it does show you how hard it is for a white person to shake his racism and self-delusion. It is way harder than you think – more like a fish swimming up stream, say,  than some blinding moment of enlightenment.

Note that the models only apply to those who grew up after 1970, after the civil rights movement. They apply best to those who go to mixed-race government schools since they are the most studied.

Even if you do not have children, it is still good to read if you want to understand how race shapes people in America and what it might take for it to become truly post-racial.

But, as it turns out, that is just why some people do not like the book. They think racism is over. They say Tatum sees race in everything and is making it worse. But that is just what you would expect from stage-one whites!

See also:

• If you like these posts you would probably like the book since they were based on it, at least in part:
  • growing up black
  • growing up white
  • growing up Asian American
  • growing up Native American
  • growing up biracial (the black-and-white kind)
  • Why all the black kids sit together
  • racelessness
  • acting white
• colour-blind racism – “I do not see colour”
• just world doctrine – “America is pretty much fair”
• crying racism
• Is racism in America over?
• racism = prejudice + power? – Tatum uses this defintion, which I disagree with: coming from a black person it comes off as too self-serving

Renee of Womanist Musings has a wonderful post on Roger Ebert’s review of “Good Hair”. I was going to comment on it at Stuff White People Do where it was guest posted, but I feel a post of my own coming on:

Roger Ebert wrote a review of Chris Rock’s film “Good Hair” (2009). Nothing surprising there: he makes his living as a reviewer. But what makes this one priceless is it shows up his whiteness in two ways:

1. He assumes he knows more than black people – even about black women’s hair!
2. He downplays what black people go through by comparing it to something white that is not at all the same thing.

Roger Ebert ends the review this way:

The movie has a good feeling, but why do I know more about this subject than Chris Rock does? Smile.

The smile presumably refers to the fact that he is married to a black woman, Chaz Hammel-Smith. Earlier in the review Ebert takes issue with the film based on the Wikipedia, of all things. So Ebert feels he knows more about black women’s hair based on what? This:

1. I am married to a black woman.
2. I look up stuff in the Wikipedia.

Compare that to Chris Rock:

1. Also married to a black woman.
2. Has a black mother and two black daughters.
3. Spent two years making a film about black women’s hair.

Where in the world does Ebert get off thinking he knows more about black women’s hair? Since Ebert does not strike me as a know-it-all blowhard – I used to watch his reviews on television – it is hard for me not to think this is racist: “White people know what they talking about, black people do not.” Help me out here.

He even assumes he knows more than his own wife, who has had such hair all her life! You know this because it is clear he printed the review without her looking it over – either that or he did not take her comments seriously. It would have kept him from making a fool of himself. But, again, he thinks he knows better.

I find it hard to imagine his wife agreeing with this:

The use of the word “natural hair” is, in any event, misleading. Take a stroll down the hair products aisle of a drugstore or look at the stock price of Supercuts. Few people of any race wear completely natural hair. If they did, we would be a nation of Unibombers.

See that: what black women go through with their hair is no big deal at all! This is stock racist deflection: what black people go through is no different than what white people go through.

White people talk that way because they have a hard time accepting difference in people – what leads to the whole “good hair” thing to begin with. They also do it because, like Ebert, they do not want to take black people seriously.

See also:

• Roger Ebert: Good Hair – the review itself
• Womanist Musings: Roger Ebert Proves Good Hair Was Made For White People – guess posted at Stuff White People Do where it gets more comments
  • Stuff White People Do: question non-white knowledge and authority – examples of how white people always think they know more than people of colour
• good hair
• Wikipedia
• How to argue like a white racist
  • “But that happened to me too!” argument – in Ebert’s review this shows up as: white women have natural hair too!
  • “Some of my best friends are black”- or wife, so I know black people
• The Barbara Bush Award for Deluded Whiteness

The Goldstone Report (2009) isthe United Nations war crimes report on the war in Gaza last winter. Richard Goldstone, a former South African judge (pictured above) led the UN’s fact-finding mission to Gaza.  The report finds both sides guilty of war crimes and possible crimes against humanity, but Israel much more so.

The report does not “prove” that war crimes took place, merely that it seems so based on facts found. The report calls on both Israelis and Palestinians over the next six months to carry out their own independent investigations that meet international standards.

If they fail to do so, then the UN Security Council should hand the matter over to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in the The Hague. But most likely America will block that: it has veto power in the Security Council and turns a blind eye to Israel’s misdeeds.

Findings:

• Palestinians:
  • Fired rockets into southern Israel with little hope of ever hitting a military target, thereby spreading terror among civilians.
  • Hamas, the ruling party, used the war as cover to kill some  from the opposing party, Fatah.
• Israelis:
  • Israel struck mosques, hospitals, schools, apartment buildings, water treatment plants and factories that had no military value. One mosque was struck while hundreds were there praying. If Israel’s true concern were weapons that may have been hidden there it would have struck the mosque in the middle of the night.
  • It struck a house after the Israeli army told Palestinians to stay there to be safe.
  • It used white phosphorus, which burns and kills people, in the middle of Gaza City.
  • Israeli soldiers used Palestinian civilians as human shields.

In war you are supposed to fight the enemy’s military and destroy things of military value, like bridges, roads and weapons factories. Some civilians will get killed, but you are supposed to take reasonable measures against that.

Israel did not. It was not just carelessness either: it went after things like water treatment plants that were a threat to no one.

The Israelis called the report “one-sided” and unacceptable – months before it even came out! They would not help the UN one bit, which had to cross into Gaza from Egypt.

After the report came out Israel said it was “one-sided” (again), “inaccurate and flawed” and that it would derail the peace process (a lie: the Israeli government is hardly serious about peace). Sadly American Congressmen and even The Economist repeat the same words and excuses as the Israelis.

Hamas does not agree with everything in the report but accepts it. Mahmoud Abbas, the president of the Palestinian Authority and a Fatah man, says he will not hold a vote on the report till March 2010. He is seen as giving in to the Americans. That has led to protests (pictured below). In Gaza there are posters of Abbas with a black X across his face at which people throw their shoes.

See also:

• The war in Gaza
• Israel
• Palestine
• United Nations
• The Economist
• how to deny a genocide: #11: Peace matters more than justice

I do not hate white people. Am I racist against them? Yes. Do I sometimes have a hard time trusting them? Yes. Do I hate some of the things they do? Yes. But do I hate anyone just for being white? No, of course not. Even with racist jerks I try to hate the sin not the sinner. But, I must admit, I have not always been successful.

I do not want to put people in a box. I want them to surprise me and sometimes they do. But too many times white people act like they all went to the same Secret Course on Whiteness that I was not invited to.

Some commenters assume that because I say bad things about whites I must hate them, that I think they are pure evil, that no one else in the world is evil, that I do not know that black people can be evil too. No, it is not like that. It is just that white people do bad things too and, unlike with black people, it tends to get overlooked or played down.

Have white people done good things? Of course. I would have died at 13 if it were not for modern medicine. My wife would have died in childbirth. There would be no Internet or television game shows. Etc.

Have white people made progress? Of course. In America they no longer use whips and chains on black people to force them to work for free. They no longer force blacks to sit at the back of the bus or hang them from trees. A big fraction of them – more than I expected – voted for a black man for president. Etc.

Whites have the same hearts and minds as everyone else, the same human nature. What makes them different: power.

Power corrupts: it hardens your heart, it wears away your sense of right and wrong, it weakens your hold on the truth. Because there is no one to keep you in check, to keep you from going off the rails. Power leads to evil and self-delusion.

So in the case of White Americans they take land from the American Indians (because they can) and make black men slaves (because they can). They knew it was wrong, but instead of stopping they made up lies about blacks and American Indians (because they can), many of which they still believe to this day (because they can). They went off the rails, losing their hold on right and wrong, on the truth. It is still going on.

That is what power does to people. Read Orwell’s “Animal Farm”, Thucydides’s “History”, Shakespeare’s “King Lear” or even the Bible.

Whites use their power to make themselves look good and blacks look bad. From the time we are little children our minds are filled with “white is right” and “black is bad” over and over again, making white people big-headed and blacks self-hating. I am not going to use my blog to add to that.

See also:

• white people
  • How racism helps and hurts white people
  • The hearts of white people
• The oneness of mankind
• I am racist
• black patriotism
  • In defence of Michelle Obama
• Race in New York
  • Uptown
• Orwell

Remarks:

This is favourite Anita Baker song.  Even when I first heard it it seemed like a song I had known for years. It only made it to #8 on the R&B chart.

At the very beginning of the video you can see Donnie Simpson the host of “Video Soul” on BET in the 1980s and 1990s. The video shows scenes of Detroit.

Lyrics:

Flashbacks of the times we’ve had
Some made us laugh some made us sad
We used to break up to make up
All the fun that came from those love games
Oh well, I think I need someone new
Oh, it just won’t do, because I think about you baby

From beginning to end 365 days of the year
I want your same ole love
All I want to do is keep on loving you
I want your same ole love

There’s a reason I feel this way
All the things you do, well it might be the things that you say
Your love never changes
It’s like a picture in a frame, and it remains the same

Your undying love for me
Oh it keeps me strong, keeps me holding on

From beginning to end 365 days of the year
I want your same ole love
All I want to do is keep on loving you
I want your same ole love

Slowly, love me
All is forsaken, I love the love we’re making
Cause it’s truly lovely
I’ll never leave you, you’ll know I need you baby

From beginning to end 365 days of the year
I want your same ole love
All I want to do is keep on loving you
I want your same ole love

From beginning to end 365 days of the year
I want your same ole love
All I want to do is keep on loving you
I want your same ole love