Well, Andrew Breitbart, smearing Shirley Sherrod in order to refute the NAACP’s resolution against “racist elements” in the Tea Party turned out to be a pretty bad idea. Yes, you cost her her job, but she’s making black people look good. It’s too bad you’re not like, a journalist, or something, and did some digging to find the full video before you declared it to be an example of reverse racism. Ms. Sherrod is actually a really worthwhile person, unlike yourself, and now the world knows it. So kudos to you for bringing our attention to a woman who was and is working to bring black people and white people together in solidarity during a time when so many are feverishly working towards the opposite.

Anyway.

I try to avoid watching Fox News. I hear about it on the real news and I see its headlines on my iGoogle page, but I can’t bring myself to waste the electricity changing the channel on my TV to “FNC”. Apparently Glenn Beck has been heralding the coming race war. I’ve always understood “the coming race war” to mean the time that racist white militias finally band together and kill off all the browns. I also thought it was a joke, and kind of funny. Beck, however, wants us to believe otherwise. He’s saying that the “New Black Panthers” are going to start a government-backed race war to kill off Big Whitey. Of course this is silly. Fox News has been complaining about the tiny group of New Black Panthers for like a decade. I don’t know who they think Obama is, but if anything is true about him, it’s that he’s not demonstrably a militant black man. I’m more militant than he is, and I’m a bougie tragic mulatto living in the suburbs. I don’t see any medallions, dreadlocks or black fists adorning the Oval Office. But we’re supposed to believe that in between getting blamed for the oil spill and fomenting socialism, he’s been training this small elite squad of brothers to take out the white menace with the U.S. Army at their disposal? I’m really just speechless.

There was a time when I wasn’t always hearing about reverse racism, race wars, etc. in the mainstream media. It kind of seemed like most reasonable people had come to the conclusion that racism was bad, we needed to work against it, and that if you were a violent, loud mouthed racist you should just stay in your cabin and keep it to yourself. We didn’t worry about them because they stayed in the woods, for the most part, and everyone thought they were “crazy” anyway. I was focused on rooting out insidious racism, the kind that you can’t easily identify, the kind that exists in progressive communities, the institutional kind that deeply affects every person of color and which still exists today but has been obscured by all this blatant racism and the fact that we now have a black man in the White House. I could be romanticizing pre-2008, but it just seems like we wouldn’t be seeing articles like “Diversity and the Myth of White Privilege” during the Bush years. They knew to keep their racism under wraps back then. I’m almost laughing to myself remembering when the GOP was respectful of black people because they felt like if they tried hard enough, they could lure a few over the fence. Case in point: Michael Steele, head of the RNC. He became head of the RNC during the 2008 campaign as, I think, a way to say “hey black people, we’ve got ourselves a Negro too!”, and also as a way to criticize Obama without seeming racist. Unfortunately, things didn’t work out the way they planned, and the black guy still won. So what’s the point of respecting black people or other nonwhite people now? They’re all just going to vote for the Colored, right? Because all people of color are a monolith, especially those predictable darkies.

I think the “racist elements” of the Tea Party/GOP are playing their end game. Calling him any name they can think of, blaming him for everything from AIDS to increased activity on the sun, doing anything they can think of to bring him down before the end game plays out. What happens then is yet to be seen. Will it be the repudiation of the Tea Party by the majority of U.S. citizens in this coming midterm election? Will it be the end (again) of acceptable blatant, virulent racism? Will something ominous happen to Obama? I couldn’t tell you. But you can’t be a right wing ideologue with unstable, easily manipulated followers and go on and on about a “coming race war” without something happening at the end. I know what some of Beck’s followers would really like it to be, and that’s scary.

I live in California, Los Angeles to be exact. I saw this on a bumper sticker the other day:

“Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald When You Really Need Him?”

8 thoughts on “The coming race war

  1. monsterzero says:

    Maybe it was just the lovely san serif font that Google Reader defaults to, but I totally read the last word in "we’ve got ourselves a Negro too!" as "tool".

  2. I could be wrong, but I feel that this kind of stuff really has been everywhere all along, I mean, that much is obvious, shit like deep-seated hatred for a group of people doesn't crop up overnight, but articles like Mr. Webb's have been around probably since affirmative action started, and I definitely remember them being around in the Bush era. A bunch of white boys whining about how they're being treated unfairly and blah blah blah. What I think is different now is there's just MORE of it. It's fracking EVERYWHERE now, where before people tried to just sweep it under the rug. In a way, I almost think at least the hate people are spouting now is more easily recognized as such. Which the hate should serve as a giant STFU to those who continually cry about how MLK day is unnecessary because racism doesn't exist anymore, but it's really ugly and sad to watch all of the deep-seated hate unfold.

    I really wish Beck and his team of hateful nut-jobs would just stop egging people on into being afraid of "the scary black man". But since that doesn't seem to be happening any time soon, I really just hope nobody gets hurt thanks to all this shit stirring.

  3. Beck & Co.'s wingnut followers scare me, too. Lady help me, some of them are my relatives.

    Also, I read "bougie tragic mulatto" and thought that would be an awesome name for a coffee shop near an art school. I may need more sleep.

  4. “Where’s Lee Harvey Oswald When You Really Need Him?”

    Jesus. Fucking. Christ.

    *Head explodes*

  5. When I first heard the "news" about what Ms. Sherrod was being canned for I thought to myself ….Self, even if she actually felt this way, she would have been a complete idiot to broadcast it.

    Then the "real news" surfaced and Breitbart was made to look like a raving lunatic on a quest to stir up a stink so putrid ….none would be able to withstand the fragrant aroma.

    He has truly done her a great service. Her story is one shared by so many people of color.

    I can only applaud his racist ass for introducing me to a wonderful human being šŸ™‚

Comments are closed.