Hey white men? What's up your arsenal?

How familiar is this sort of image, just below, to you? You've seen it a lot before? Stuff like it? When have you ever seen an image like the one above in which the people with virtually all the weapons were women of color, and the one being assaulted was a white man? Just curious. Rent Born in Flames and begin imagining it. And please keep this in mind. What happens in the photo below happens every day on Earth, by white men against women of color, in one form or another. Women of color "retaliating" or organising militantly against white men: it's just in the imagination--the fearful imagination of white men. Do you understand the difference between what's actually happening in the world and what isn't? I hope so. And I hope you're working, if a white man, to end what it is that white men do, globally, without accountability to anyone.

[image of U.S. white cops with all manner of weaponry, including the misuse of GERMAN shepherd dogs, being used to terrorise, dominate, subordinate, oppress, and control African Americans was found here]

The most common "native" language is Mandarin Chinese. English is a distant third. [source cited below]

I write in a minority language but one that the white speakers of it believe is "international". I am part of a gendered class of people that is less than half of the world's gendered populations. My race, whiteness, is shared with approximately 8% of the world's population, depending on how such things are measured. But, regardless of whether whites are 5 or 15 percent of the world's people, we are, needless to say, a minority.

White English-speaking men are a small minority in the world, yet no other group seems to have managed the ego and force necessary to try and get the world to believe "WE ARE IT: THE definition of HUMANITY!" We aren't "IT" if by "it" we mean representatives of the world's population, of the languages spoken in the world, of the gender most alive on Earth. Minority, minority, and again, minority.

One of the most effective means of maintaining an oppressive system or set of systems is to make sure that, structurally, there are no mechanisms, no means, and no value placed on holding white men accountable to what we do, both one-to-one, in small and large groups, organisationally, or institutionally, to women of color around the world. Nor are we made to be accountable to, to answer responsibly to, what women of color have to say to us about our oppressive ways. We can just play our white music, or our awesome World Music collection, and call it all good.

Do you know, in twenty-five years, how many white men I've met who are "well-read" (as white "educated" men define that term) in radical feminist writings by women of color? Maybe three.

That's THREE in twenty-five years. Consider that for a moment. How many white men are well-read in what white non-feminist, racist men have written? In my personal experience, hundreds.

And I tend to hear about such white men, where and when they show up in society. (I'm in that loop, more or less.) I'm aware of both Robert Jensen's and Derrick Jensen's good work, for example. (No, they are not related.) And I can't even say that Derrick is "well-read" in radical feminism. But I can say he listens to radical women with an open heart and mind.

What does that tell you? It should tell you a lot, not the least of which is that white men don't care to know much about the world unless we've said it and written it down, no matter how fucked up our views of the world, no matter how utterly egotistical and delusional our views of ourselves are.

A function of being privileged, as James Baldwin and so many others over time have noted, is that those of with a particular positioning as oppressor get to be as in denial about the effects of what we do as we wish. If a woman of color calls us out, for example, we can shrug it off and call her all the names we have not stuck far enough up our WMS arsenal.

Through what means do women of color have of holding to account white men for the atrocities we do? What happens if individual women of color request we get out of their way, leave them alone, stop talking, stop coming onto them, stop assuming all WOC are prostitutes, stop assuming all WOC exist to do is serve men, and white men in very particularly misogynistic ways that reside in the white heteromale supremacist imagination. The WHMS imagination, tragically for the world of women, is not kept interior--it is not held only in the mind, privately. It is, rather, projected, displayed, acted out, enforced institutionally against women of color in every horrific way imaginable.

What white men do to women of color in pornography is just one example. I won't be linking to those WHMS human rights abuses any time soon. That alone would be enough to convince anyone that, clearly, there are no systems of accountability in place, no laws, no customs, no practices practiced by white men to call out, shut down, and stop our oppression of women of color by white men.

John Perkins, who is not well-read at all in radical feminism, and who holds to some fairly sexist/misogynistic views about such things as "the feminine" and women's role, does at least detail accounts of how white male power works, globally, against the interests and bodies, against the cultures and civilisations of women of color. Robert has a clear understanding of what's fucked up about whiteness and manhood as it expresses itself in a white male supremacist society. Derrick gets the connections between how women of color are treated and ecocide.

There are a few white men whose writing I find valuable. But there's one thing white men can't tell me about: the experiences of women of color as experienced by WOC. Only women of color can do that. Only women of color can write out their lives, tell their stories, analyse their experiences, including the societies in which they live and die. White men cannot do this. White women cannot do this. Men of color cannot do this.

So, given that, why don't more white men read what radical feminist women of color have to say? What don't more white men read novels and essays, if not also non-fiction work and plays, by women of color?

Can at least one white man reading this answer that question, please.

I didn't read the writings of women of color because I'm a white man, to be clear. I read it because my feminist womentor, a white woman, gave me a reading list that included a lot of writings by women of color. That's when I learned about the Kitchen Table Women of Color Press, which is linked to on the lower right of this blog. That's where I learned about Barbara and Beverly Smith, Gloria Anzaldua, and so many other women of color. And what I realised is that white women's experience doesn't explain what women of color experience. There's some overlap, of course, as there is among all humans who are having human experiences, among all women who are having human experiences as women in patriarchies. But what women of color have to say, collectively, in my view, in my experience, is THE source of something white men are fond of calling TRUTH: political truth, intellectual truth, emotional truth, spiritual truth. But white men seem incessantly to insist that such TRUTH is not knowable unless "discovered" or "revealed" to one or many white men. So what god is can only be taught to us in the West by white men, by white men's writings. By white men who mistranslate language, who don't understand things, who are largely ignorant about what most of the world's human beings is EXPERIENCING. Please think about that for a moment.

We know a few things, us white men, don't we? We know, for example, that one out of every five human beings on Earth is Chinese. (The single largest ethnic group on the planet by far is Han Chinese, which represents 19.73% of the global population. Source: a white male run place called Wikipedia, here.) We know that over half the world's human population is female, not male.

Here's some more info about the preponderance of white people, women and men, in just three countries that have lots of white folks. (Keep in mind half, at least half, are NOT men.)

Argentina

Main article: White Argentine

Argentina, along with other areas of new settlement like Canada, Australia, New Zealand or the United States, is considered a country of immigrants where the vast majority originated from Europe.^[44] According to different estimates, white Argentines make up anywhere from 86.4%^[45] to 97% of Argentina's population, or around 39 million people.^[46]
Most immigrants came between the mid-19th century and World War II. Nearly half were from Italy,^[47] and almost one third from Spain. Poland, France, the Ottoman Empire (chiefly Christian Lebanese, Syrians, Greeks and Armenians), Russia, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Portugal made up the other eight top sources of immigrants. Switzerland, Belgium, United Kingdom, Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, and the United States were the next largest. European Jews were among the Eastern European arrivals.
Argentine censuses are conducted on the basis of self-identification. According to the last census, 95% of Argentines identify as white.^{[48][verification needed]}
Criticism of the national census state that data has historically been collected using the category of national origin rather than race in Argentina, leading to undercounting Afro-Argentines and mestizos.^[49] Africa Viva (Living Africa) is a black rights group in Buenos Aires with the support of the Organization of American States, financial aid from the World Bank and Argentina's census bureau is working to add an "Afro-descendants" category to the 2010 census. The 1887 national census was the final year where blacks were included as a separate category before it was eliminated by the government.^[50]

Australia

Further information: European Australian

From 1788, when the first British colony in Australia was founded, until the early 19th century, most immigrants to Australia were British and Irish convicts. These were augmented by small numbers of free settlers from Britain, Ireland and other European countries. However, until the mid-19th century, there were few restrictions on immigration, although members of ethnic minorities tended to be assimilated into the Anglo-Celtic populations.
People of many nationalities, including many non-white people, emigrated to Australia during the goldrushes of the 1850s. However, the vast majority was still white and the goldrushes inspired the first racist activism and policy, directed mainly at Chinese people.
From the late 19th century, the Colonial/State and later federal governments of Australia restricted all permanent immigration to the country by non-Europeans. These policies became known as the "White Australia policy", which was consolidated and enabled by the Immigration Restriction Act 1901,^[51] but was never universally applied. Immigration inspectors were empowered to ask immigrants to take dictation from any European language as a test for admittance, a test used in practice to exclude people from Asia, Africa, and some European and South American countries, depending on the political climate.
Although they were not the prime targets of the policy, it was not until after World War II that large numbers of southern European and eastern European immigrants were admitted for the first time.^[52] Following this, the White Australia Policy was relaxed in stages: non-European nationals who could demonstrate European descent were admitted (e.g. descendants of European colonizers and settlers from Latin American or Africa), as were autochthonous inhabitants of various nations from the Middle East, most significantly from Lebanon. In 1973, all immigration restrictions based on race and/or geographic origin were officially terminated.

United States

See also: White American and Definitions of whiteness in the United States

The current U.S. Census definition includes white "people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East or North Africa.^[108] The U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Investigation describes white people as "having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa through racial categories used in the UCR Program adopted from the Statistical Policy Handbook (1978) and published by the Office of Federal Statistical Policy and Standards, U.S. Department of Commerce.^[109]
The cultural boundaries separating white Americans from other racial or ethnic categories are contested and always changing. According to John Tehranian, among those not considered white at some points in American history have been: the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians, Spaniards, Hispanics, Slavs, and Greeks.^[110] Studies have found that while current parameters officially encompassed Arabs as part of the White American racial category, many Arab Americans from places other than Bilad al-Sham feel they are not white and are not perceived as white by American society."^[111]
Professor David R. Roediger of the University of Illinois, suggests that the construction of the white race in the United States was an effort to mentally distance slave owners from slaves.^[112] By the 18th century, white had become well established as a racial term. The process of officially being defined as white by law often came about in court disputes over pursuit of citizenship. The Immigration Act of 1790 offered naturalization only to "any alien, being a free white person". In at least 52 cases, people denied the status of white by immigration officials sued in court for status as white people. By 1923, courts had vindicated a "common-knowledge" standard, concluding that "scientific evidence" was incoherent. Legal scholar John Tehranian argues that in reality this was a "performance-based" standard, relating to religious practices, education, intermarriage and a community's role in the United States.^[113]
In 1923, the Supreme Court decided in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind that people of India were not "free white men" entitled to citizenship, despite anthropological evidence in "the extreme northwestern districts of India"^[114] there is present the "Caucasian or Aryan race"^[114] with an "intermixture of blood"^[114] from the "dark skinned Dravidian. [source for the above info on whiteness and population: here]

The CIA lists ethnic groups accordingly, and we can note that they use the racist term mulatto, and that any militarised government in the West is tracking this information to be able to maintain white male supremacist control of as much of the world as possible. Keep in mind, race is a political term, not a "natural" one, or even a "cultural" one.

What do we know about the populations of people by the primary language spoken?

World Diversity Patterns

There are more than 6.5 billion people in the world today.  Nearly 2/3 of them are Asians living on less than 1/3 of the land.   Only about 5% of the world's people live in North America.

GEOGRAPHIC REGION	POPULATION	PERCENT   OF WORLD
Asia	3,518,000,000	56.4%
Africa	839,000,000	13.5%
Europe (including nations that     were part of the Soviet Union)	803,000,000	12.9%
Latin America and Caribbean	539,000,000	8.7%
North America (U.S. and Canada)	320,000,000	5.1%
Near East	179,000,000	2.9%
Oceania (Pacific Islands)	32,000,000	.5%

Source: Global Population Profile: 2002, U.S. Census Bureau 2004

Just how many different societies, cultures, and ethnic groups make up the world's population is not certain.  This is due, in part, to the fact that these social entities are not always distinct enough to clearly warrant their being considered as separate groups.  For instance, Canada and the U.S. are separate nations but culturally and linguistically similar almost to the point of not being distinguishable by outsiders (except for French speaking Quebec Province).

Contributing to the problem of counting the number of societies, cultures, and ethnic groups is not only the overlapping nature of many of these groups but the fact that they are now changing rapidly as mass media and relatively inexpensive long distance travel increasingly blur cultural differences.  We are experiencing culture change on a scale and at a pace that is unprecedented in human history.

A good indication of cultural survival is the continued use of traditional languages and dialects.  People who are unable to readily communicate because of language differences are more likely to maintain cultural differences as well.  Linguists estimate that the world's peoples speak 5000-6000 languages.  The most common "native" language is Mandarin Chinese.   English is a distant third.

Spoken as "Native" Language		TOTAL sPEAKERS
1.	Mandarin Chinese	874,000,000
2.	Hindi (India)	366,000,000
3.	English	341,000,000
4.	Spanish	322-358,000,000
5.	Bengali (India and Bangladesh)	207,000,000
6.	Portuguese	176,000,000
7.	Russian	167,000,000
8.	Japanese	125,000,000
9.	German (standard)	100,000,000
10.	Korean	78,000,000

Note: If the 15 major variants of Arabic are considered one language, Arabic is the 6th most common language in the world having 198-201,000,000 native speakers. Source:  Ethnologue Volume I: Languages of the World, 14th ed. (2000).  These statistics are only rough approximations in most cases.

While English is not spoken as a native language by the largest number of people, it is the most world wide in its distribution.  It has become the second language of choice in most countries.  About 1/4 to 1/3 of humanity now understand and speak it to some degree.  As English and a few other major languages grow in popularity and as cultural diffusion accelerates, many of the languages of smaller ethnic groups are dying.  As many as 1/2 of the languages in the world are no longer spoken by children.  This is a major step in the direction of language and cultural extinction.  The languages that are becoming extinct are not doing so because they are "primitive" or unable to allow adequate communication.  They are dying because their speakers find it more useful to speak other languages.  This is largely a result of the growth in influence and power of nation states over their indigenous minority populations and of the increasing globalization of our economies.  The culture homogenizing effect of mass media should not be underestimated either.  Much of the television programming viewed around the world originated in Western Nations.  It is startling to realize that the most popular television shows world wide in recent years have been stereotypical American sitcoms such as "Will and Grace" and "Friends."

The rapid global growth in the importance of the English language and of Western culture (especially American) has not been as straight forward and simple as it initially may seem.  Cultural traits have not only diffused from the Western Industrial societies to the rest of the world.  They have gone the other way as well.  American society, culture, and language have become far more diverse.  For instance, English now contains words from more than 240 other languages.  In less than a generation, the cultural influences of Asia and Latin America especially have dramatically changed life in the U.S. and Canada.  This has been particularly true of the food preferences in urban areas.

Countering these rapid globalization trends in the late 20th and early 21st centuries has been the dramatic resurgence of tribalism.  [As named by whom? It's an English word, right?] While many small indigenous societies are disappearing into national societies, many larger ethnic groups are violently reasserting their presence and even independence from the nations that they have been integral parts of until now.  The breakup of Yugoslavia into ethnically "purified" areas in the 1990's is a prime example.  Similar "tribal" reemergences have occurred throughout Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union.  Tribalism also recently has spawned genocidal conflicts in Africa, especially in Sudan, Somalia, Rwanda, and Congo. [source: here]



I leave y'all with this piece of completely non-feminist analysis about us whiteboys--who the author below prefers to refer sexistly refer to as "white people":

Comparing People to Hitler
By: Isaac “Absent” Amirian
Being a truly advanced white person means being able to speak with authority about pretty much any field of conversation- especially politics. In order for white people to streamline the process of knowing everything, all human beings can be neatly filed into one of two categories: People I Agree With, and People Who are Just Like Adolf Hitler.

Comparing people to Hitler is an easy way for white people to get a strong point across to the less enlightened, or the insufficiently white. Everyone knows who Adolf Hitler was. And everyone knows that Hitler was very, very bad. Therefore, if a white person really, REALLY, doesn’t like something or someone, he or she may angrily say something to the effect of, “This is exactly the same kind of thing that Hitler used to do!” accompanied by varying levels of profanity based on blood-alcohol content. No matter what your gut reaction may be at that point, do not disagree with that white person. Otherwise, well, you love Hitler.

This time-tested white-person maneuver may seem so awesomely useful to you that you are tempted to go out and try it right now. Not so fast. White people have spent the last 30 years perfecting this technique. There are cultural guidelines.

It’s also critical that you avoid the fatal mistake of getting creative and comparing people you don’t like to other evil dictators, such as Joseph Stalin or Fidel Castro. With few exceptions, white people are actually fond of almost any dictator not named Hitler, and your remark that “this is just like something Mao Zedong would do” will be met with blank stares and possible social alienation. This is because, with the exception of Hitler, oppressive dictators share a passion for many of the things white people love- such as universal health care, conspiracy theories, caring about poor people while being filthy rich, and cool hats. Stick to the script and compare things you don’t like to Hitler, and Hitler alone.

Now, like most reasonable people, you might find this strategy distasteful, and even a bit disrespectful, since after all, Hitler was responsible for the deaths of tens of millions, and probably doesn’t have that much in common with Pat Robertson, in perspective. If you prefer to avoid hearing or using the Hitler technique, we recommend you speak in soothing, affirming tones around angry white people to prevent the phenomenon from manifesting, and change the subject tactfully. To something that doesn’t involve George W. Bush. [source: here]

Or, to update, that also doesn't involve Barack Obama. Or Hillary Clinton. Or any white person or person of color with a progressive to radical political agenda and perspective. Or to any feminist. Or to any Black Nationalist.

Because, really, it is the White Nationalist men who really, truly, DO worship Adolph Hitler. Really. I'm not kidding. And they think women have their place serving white men. Really. White Nationalists tend not to be class-privileged. And there is a theory that because poorer and working class white males don't grow up with the esteem and "sense of self as of value" that white class-privileged men grow up with, they channel that lack of esteem, that pain, into an obscenely huge investment in being WHITE--not the liberal kind. Also in being MEN--not the gay kind.

But from whatever class background, with whatever levels of white male institutional "education" white men have the audacity to demonstrate such profound ignorance, in the guise of intelligence, no less!, in stating that any feminist, any one, is "like a Nazi". (Without, you know, being completely embarrassed no less!) Geesh. On the whole, what is the evidence that white class-privileged "educated" white so-called "intelligent" men care about what is happening in the world to the majority of people who live in that world? Where is the evidence of white men stopping other white men from committing atrocities to women of color worldwide. Send me the links to the groups' websites, please. I'll link to them. ALL of them. As long as it is their policy and practice to be fully accountable to feminist women of color.

Hammering Out Justice and Freedom: The White Man vs. James Baldwin in Take This Hammer

[this image of James Baldwin on the cover of Time magazine's 17 May 1963 ECD issue, is from here]

When James Baldwin speaks of "America" he is using the term most used often by many people to describe "The United States of America". It's the term that was, and is still today, used by many people to refer to this strange land that, as Andrea Dworkin once noted with stunning accuracy, has "no memory and no mind". Neither Baldwin nor Dworkin ever wrote about this country from a white heterosexual male conservative or liberal point of view. Andrea was a white Jewish radical feminist lesbian raised in a predominantly working class neighborhood of New Jersey. James was an African American boy, later a gay man, who was raised poor in Harlem in NYC. (For an utterly brilliant analysis of many aspects of James Baldwin's work, please read the "Communion" chapter in her greatly misunderstood and incredibly important book, Intercourse. For those who can afford to buy it, please try and get a copy or that tenth anniversary edition, as the twentieth anniversary version is being boycotted. To those who cannot purchase it, the tenth anniversary edition is most likely available through the interlibrary loan system across the U.S., if not also in other countries. To know why there is a boycott of the latest edition, click here.)

New York's harbor was an entrance point not only for people from Europe to come here to colonise and destroy this land, forging it with great violence into the United States, but was later a place for European immigrants to come to escape atrocities unfathomable to the new arrivals. What had been done here against African slaves and American Indians, was already wiped from the history books, or was told in such ways as to make slaves grateful, and Indians savage. But there has never been anyone more savage than the white man, and no Indigenous person could even attempt such savagery.

Born on August 2, 1924, Baldwin left this country for a good many years beginning in 1948, to escape the racism and homophobia that ran rampant across this land. He returned in 1957 to get involved in the struggle for Black Civil Rights.

All the quotes that follow were found  here.

Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced. --James Baldwin

People who treat other people as less than human must not be surprised when the bread they have cast on the waters comes floating back to them, poisoned. --James Baldwin

A child cannot be taught by anyone who despises him [or her], and a child cannot afford to be fooled. --James Baldwin

Americans, unhappily, have the most remarkable ability to alchemize all bitter truths into an innocuous but piquant confection and to transform their moral contradictions, or public discussion of such contradictions, into a proud decoration, such as are given for heroism on the battle field. --James Baldwin

American history is longer, larger, more various, more beautiful, and more terrible than anything anyone has ever said about it. --James Baldwin

There's so much in Take This Hammer to analyse, appreciate, and apply to contemporary misogynistic Amerikkka. (I have three primary ways to refer to this country in writing: the U.S., Amerikkka, and "The United Rapes of Amerikkka".) The term America, to me never means only the U.S., as people from Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Brazil, and Argentina are all equally American. That is has been used by the white founding fathers to mean only the U.S. speaks to the arrogance of those white heterosexual men, living on land that never legitimately belonged to him.) There's so much for this radical profeminist (yours truly) to listen to and learn from. I wish there were more conversation between Baldwin and young and older women in it (there are bits, but they are brief indeed). But the footage is what it is and we cannot know that he didn't spend more time speaking with women; we only know this is how the editors thought it could be presented to a television audience. Most of his dialogue with women may well have ended up on the film editor's cutting room floor. James was not a man to see women as less human than men, which is obvious if you've read his novels. He portrays women with more complex humanity and political insight than any other male novelist, essayist, and playwright I know.

Be that as it may, what this film is reveals a great deal about oppression, how it works, what it does, how it impacts individuals who are part of a socially despised and politically subordinated group, and why morale is never ever an individual matter. It is always social and political, however personal it may also be. This is so whether we're speaking of the morale of women being structurally and intimately dominated by men; people of color or whites enduring and resisting white supremacist discrimination and invisibilisation; lesbians and other queer people or heterosexuals negotiating stereotypes, stigmas, and a lack of civil rights nationally; the poor enduring a country in which the rich are the greatest recipients of welfare (corporate welfare); in a capitalist state; Indigenous nations and people always facing genocide on lands stolen and colonised by white men; or Muslims and Jews being discriminated against and targeted for violence by white Christian men and boys--and all combinations thereof.

It's the sites of intersection and the overlapping of ways of being oppressed and oppressor that I think become especially truth-telling in a political climate where one issue and one vantagepoint tends to take center stage, as if everything else isn't also, always, going on too. So, for example, a working class Black woman in the U.S., some of whose heritage goes back to England and France as well as to the slaves as well as American Indians, due to white men raping each: what is her single issue? What is the single issue of any white middle class gay man who is part of a white settler country that Indigenous people are appropriately trying to reclaim? What about the white heterosexual woman who is being battered by her white husband, raising two children--a girl and a boy--from a previous marriage whose father was African American? How does she raise those children to know who they are in this country, while figuring out how to survive each day with a terrorist who threatens to kill all of them should she leave? And what of an elderly disabled Chicana woman who lives alone in an apartment in a white-majority city that won't keep sidewalks clear in the stormy winter months? What is the single issue for a homeless transgendered teenager who is drug-addicted and economically and psychologically trapped inside a system of prostitution and pornography, whose pimp takes most of the money, leaving them only with enough to buy drugs?

While people do not ever really live single-issue, single vantagepoint lives, urgent necessity may force--as class and race privilege often will allow--a person to prioritise one issue and perspective only. The battered woman may prioritise her need to escape over where she raises her children so that they are among people who can teach them how to survive in a white supremacist country. The gay white man think "gay rights" [not trans rights, not lesbian rights] is THE issue, never bothering to notice how his male, white, and class privileges make him ignorant of and callous towards the people fighting to take back their homeland.

There are many overlapping issues lessons in this footage of James Baldwin visiting a predominantly African American section of San Francisco, to speak with the people there about the condition of their lives, their experiences of The White Man, and what forms of survival are possible while living under WHM supremacy. "The Man" has always been white in this country, and the white man has always been straight--or at least heterosexist, racist, misogynistic and classist as hell. Baldwin is not there to discuss matters of sexual orientation, though he was most certainly an openly gay man when he visited the city. But, as you may well know, the predominantly gay male parts of town have never been the Blackest parts of town, and wealthy white gay men have made sure that will not ever be the case, as long as they live in The Castro.

Simplistically white liberal minds will not likely be able to hear or understand what James Baldwin is talking about. White conservatives won't bother to listen to him, period. Even white progressives may make some very simple mistakes in comprehending what Baldwin and the people of San Francisco are discussing.

One likely liberal misread would sound like this: "the way those Black folks speak about 'The White Man' is racist and misandrist". To say this, let alone believe it, is to be willfully, seriously, and irredeemably trapped in the illusions of the privileged, who are so very fond of professing "all people should be treated the same" or "feminism has succeeded" or "Blacks now have it good: we have a presidential Black family in the White House, after all". And that proves what, exactly? That white men don't rule this land? They do, while Barack Obama figures out how to work with the majority white Senate and Congresspeople to pass legislation that will likely do very little to shift this country away from its odd obsession and sadistic infatuation with wealth and white supremacy, its condescending "Christian" faith in heterosexual male power in secular and religious laws and customs. Regardless of the color of the man who is presently president, the U.S. government, on the whole, will not do a goddamned thing to change the power structures that Amerikka is built on.

These structures are no less in place due to Obama winning the election in the fall of 2008, and they are maintained with enormous force by white conservatives and the white liberals who wish to believe--against all evidence--that we live in a just land that cares about its citizens. Liberals, at least, tend to recognise our xenophobia, our racist and classist wars against nations of color, but only if off these shores. The racist, classist, gynocidal and genocidal war against American Indians remains some footnote in history in the white liberal imagination.

Our atrocities are generally invisibilised as such no matter how frequently or systematically the force of the oppressor comes down on the oppressed who wish to live in freedom. It takes a lot of effort, to say nothing of ignorance, to hold to ideas of what "America" is, when such ideas never were part of what constructed this country. And few, if any, white men have been willing even to own what this country really stands for and is, in the sense of naming it accurately, detailing the violence done, to whom and by whom.

The White Man exists, but only in a deadly manner of speaking. He exists politically, but not humanely. He rules this country with force as surely as adult disciplinarians rule children with the strap. And neither oppressed child nor oppressed adult wishes to be treated in this way, as a thing, owned, possessed, and ordered about by conditions that are beyond any individual's control. It is not just that The White Man is totalitarian and domineering. He is also delusional, ignorant, egotistical, defensive and offensive. His sense of self requires the subordination of others to be what it is. He doesn't exist unless all women, and men of color, are oppressed by him. He can't know love or empathy or compassion because he cannot see people as human beings because he is barely one himself. He can only see them through his White Man distortions and deceptions, stereotypes and stigmas. He perceives by projecting his inhumanity onto those he believes are inferior, never caring to note that no one could be as inhumane as he is.

His perverse position of power is held in place with forces seen and unseen. There is no meaningful consolation or redemption in being an oppressor, except that one doesn't have to experience what those s/he oppresses institutionaly. The oppressor's humanity is atrophied, ghostly and garish, because s/he will not own what s/he does and what it means that s/he does it.

As a white man, knowing what I am and what my people do in the name of being willfully and unwittingly white, in the effort to bolster some straight idea of manhood, I have learned to listen most carefully to two groups of people, who overlap significantly in many regards, primarily by existing as the same people. Women, and people of color. Each group is oppressed for being what it is supposed to be in the imagination of the white man. The African American is seen as the n*gger. The woman is seen, among other things, as the wh*re. And each group has to bear the brunt of the white man's projections and resist taking in anything he has to say about them. This is hard in a country that offers so little to so many, and so much to so few. And so it is to women of color to whom I most turn for the deepest truths about who they are and who I am--about what it means to them to be human, and what it means that I with my people, are grotesquely inhumane, some horrid combination of both n*gger and wh*ore. These two terms best describe white straight men, even while they greatly and bitterly resent knowing this about themselves, and will do just about anything, commit any atrocity, to prove that they are not either. One day white men will wake up to what we do, and we will know the whole ugly truth about ourselves. On that day, and not until that morning's sun rises, there will be a new kind of hope for humanity.

Before viewing, I welcome you to listen to this one song. It is about what to do with a hammer, should you find one in your hands.

Take This Hammer will hopefully be discussed here for a while.

Please note that just under the video's frame, there is the option to view the film with or without captions. These captions are largely accurate but not entirely so; there are moments identified in them as "[inaudible]" when, if you are a hearing person and listen carefully, you can usually discern exactly what is being said.

I hope you get a lot out of viewing this amazing program that aired on National Educational Television in 1964.  It might just as well have been filmed last week: Take This Hammer. I hope we collectively use it wisely to create more justice and freedom for all.

[An addendum, written 23 Nov. 2009: As Dog16arma notes below, one need not watch this footage to learn about oppression. There are plenty of women of color whose work reveals the intricacies and entanglements of many forms of oppression, including the brutality, interpersonal and institutional of men's war against women.]

A Cinematic Litmus AND Rorschach Test: what happens when we move beyond "the single story" of oppressed people? How do oppressors understand the film, Precious, and what are the concerns of the oppressed?

(Source for all that is from the New York Times online, including image and article: here)

NYT caption: “Precious,” about a disadvantaged young woman played by Gabourey Sidibe, left, has sparked controversy over its meaning.

To me, the NYT and other U.S. white family-owned and corporation-owned media often don't "get it" when stories are told that are not supposed to be told in the United Rapes of Amerikkka. And so people used to being bombarded by dominant media don't know how to interpret the meaning of such films and other creative projects. Whites don't know what to do humanely with images and stories of Black people and other POC that don't match up with their stereotypes--or with those that do. And men don't quite know what to do, humanely, with portraits of women and girls that are or are not in sync with their stereotypes. Finding the humanity in any and every person is not a struggle many whites or men are willing to engage in.

In between and beyond the realms of WHM social conservatism and WHM political liberalism there is a book, Push, by Sapphire, and now there is this film based on her book. Reporter/writer for the New York Times, Felicia R. Lee unpacks some of the unrest surrounding this film, including by interviewing Latoya @ Racialicious!! (Congratulations, Latoya! Finally, a voice of reason and insight in the dominant media!)

Please go listen to and watch this video about "The Danger of The Single Story" if you haven't already heard Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's excellent talk, which helps make sense of this NYT piece.

To Blacks, Precious Is ‘Demeaned’ or ‘Angelic’

By FELICIA R. LEE 

Published: November 20, 2009

A reinforcement of noxious stereotypes or a realistic and therapeutic portrayal of a black family in America?

“Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire,” the new film about an obese, poor, illiterate, young black woman who is sexually and emotionally abused, has sparked this heartfelt and at times heated debate about its meaning in the two weeks since its limited release.

Now, as it opens nationwide in 100 markets this weekend, the conversation about which black stories are told, and how, is bound to intensify, thanks to post-screening discussion groups; the cultural influence of two of the movie’s executive producers, Oprah Winfrey and Tyler Perry; and the Oscar buzz the critically acclaimed film has already begun generating.

“In some ways, it’s ‘The Color Purple’ all over again, with people writing and talking about what this film represents,” said Mark Anthony Neal, a professor who teaches black popular culture at Duke University. He was referring to the 1985 film based on the novel by Alice Walker, which was directed by Steven Spielberg and starred Ms. Winfrey.

A father repeatedly rapes and impregnates his daughter in “The Color Purple” (as does the father in “Precious”), enraging some critics (mostly men) who asserted that the book and the film treated black men harshly. “Precious” has avoided that kind of backlash, but “people are suspicious of narratives that don’t put us in the best light,” Professor Neal said. The roots of that suspicion, he said, can be found in a long history of negative images in popular culture that helped keep black people in their place by reinforcing the notion of their inferiority.

Professor Neal was among dozens of black people interviewed about their perspectives on “Precious.” Perhaps the most provocative salvo against the movie was fired by Armond White, the chief film critic of The New York Press and the chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

“Not since ‘The Birth of a Nation’ has a mainstream movie demeaned the idea of black American life as much as ‘Precious,’ ” Mr. White wrote in his review. “Full of brazenly racist clichés (Precious steals and eats an entire bucket of fried chicken), it is a sociological horror show.”

“Black pathology sells,” Mr. White said in an interview. “It’s an over-the-top political fantasy that works only because it demeans blacks, women and poor people.”

Mainstream news media and serious critics ignored recent black-theme films like “Cadillac Records” and “Akeelah and the Bee” because they were not negative enough, he added.

But Latoya Peterson, the editor of Racialicious.com, a blog about the intersection of race and popular culture, said Mr. White was off base.

“His review buys into the narrative that there can only be one acceptable presentation of black life,” Ms. Peterson said. “He’s flattening the black experience, and in that way, he denies our humanity.”

Ms. Peterson, who lives in the Washington area, said that she believed that “Precious” effectively tackled many issues affecting young girls: “sexual abuse, poverty, violence and failing schools.”

Luvon Roberson, a public relations specialist in Manhattan, said that some of her friends had told her that “Precious” was a cascade of stereotypes, but that she found it a “deeply moving” way to show the beauty and innocence of a poor, fat, dark-skinned woman.

“At the end of the film, Precious looked angelic to me,” Ms. Roberson said.

Aymar Jean Christian, a doctoral student in communications at the University of Pennsylvania, said he found “Precious” brilliant and added, “In some ways, the debate’s not about the movie, it’s about the idea of the movie,” and black concerns about representation.

On his blog, Televisual (at blog.ajchristian.org), he wrote that Precious was “by far the scariest movie for anyone invested in having only ‘good’ representations of black people (‘The Cosby Show!’) in film and TV.”

In that case, “Precious” need not apply. Set in Harlem in the late 1980s, the movie focuses on Claireece Jones, a teenager known as Precious, who is sexually and emotionally abused by her enraged, foul-mouthed mother, Mary (played by the actor and comedian Mo’Nique). They rely on welfare; Precious is H.I.V.-positive; and the first of her two children (both by her father) has Down’s syndrome. Precious fantasizes about having a light-skinned boyfriend and about herself as a thin, white girl.

Joe Drake, president of the film division at Lionsgate, the movie’s distributor, sidestepped a response to the more negative charges about the movie.

“Precious has become imperative viewing and entered the cultural conversation in an organic, impassioned way,” Mr. Drake wrote in an e-mail message. “We are proud to be a part of this phenomenon.”

Sapphire, the author of “Push,” said it was too late in the day to worry that the film’s themes and images were somehow stigmatizing or inauthentic.

“With Michelle, Sasha and Malia and Obama in the White House and in the post-‘Cosby Show’ era, people can’t say these are the only images out there,” Sapphire said. “Black people are able to say ‘Precious’ represents some of our children, but some of our children go to Yale.”

“Child abuse is not black,” she added. “What do you call the man in Austria who imprisoned his daughter for years?”

She defended her title character as a positive “Oliver Twist-like” figure, who grew out of the stories of the young people she met in New York in the late 1980s, when crack and AIDS emerged.

“Push,” which was controversial when it was published in 1996, is also back at the top of best-seller lists.

“Precious” puts a much-needed spotlight on the underclass, said Nathan McCall, a novelist and former newspaper reporter who teaches a course on the history of African-American images at Emory University. But, he added, Lee Daniels, the film’s director, could have avoided some stereotypes by not making light-complexioned actors the good guys or showing Precious eating a bucket of chicken, he said.

“A white artist can make a film about a family of 10 drug addicts, and the public sees it as a film about a family of 10 drug addicts, not 10 white drug addicts,” Mr. McCall said. “A black artist can make that film, too, but you have to be aware of the history.”

Will Phillips, 10-Year-Old White non-Gay U.S. Southern Boy, Won't Pledge Allegiance To A Flag or a Country that Discriminates Against Lesbians and Gays--a Country that also Remains profoundly Racist and Sexist

November 16, 2009 on CNN -

Will Phillips appeared on CNN Monday morning with his father, Jay, to discuss his refusal to say the pledge of allegiance.

"I've grown up with a lot of people and I'm good friends with a lot of people who are [lesbian and] gay and I think they should have the rights all people should, and I'm not going to swear that they do," the ten-year-old Phillips said.

via http://atheistmedia.com


Hurray for this child!!!! THANK YOU, Will Phillips!!

While I believe heterosexual marriage ought to be revoked in this country, I support many other people who have other agendas. We must note that Will Phillips DOES mention lesbians as well as gay men, and that he does also take issue with the continuing racism and sexism in this country. Brave child. My prayers are with you to be safe from all bigoted bullies and others who will disrespect your stance. Stay strong!!!

(Sorry, atheistmedia.com, but I am praying for him. And thanks so much for making this available. And my understanding of G-d bears no resemblance to the corrupt capitalist white straight male gods worshipped by dominant U.S. heteromale supremacist Amerikkkans.)

Yes, White Jews can certainly be anti-Black racists (in the U.S. and in Israel), but these two stories are a bit more complex

[this is an image of the main character, Avery, in an excellent documentary called Off and Running, and was found here]

GREAT discussion over at Racialicious about a non-Jewish Jamaican woman who has come to the U.S. and works for a white U.S. Jewish woman with an adopted Black son (he's described as from an African country, and I'll assume that means "sub-Saharan" and that he's Black). That discussion is like model stuff in terms of engagement and respect among the contributors. Wow. Wonderful to see and read. Gives me hope for the blogosphere, not that there's only one way to engage, but... really wonderful levels of insight and sharing. Really feels like "caring community"! The real story discussed at Racialicious should not be confused at all with the story in the documentary linked to below, which these first two images are from.

This is a picture of Avery with the rest of her family:

 [image found here]

I posted a comment with these two links:
-- one to an excellent documentary called Off and Running
and
-- one to a classic U.S. essay by James Baldwin, which can be found and read here.
 
The film is a must see documentary, imo, and the essay is a classic. (Yes, he does assume "all the Jews are white" but that was his experience.) I think James Baldwin is so beautiful, had one of the best minds of the 20th Century, and I wish I could sit down with him and talk for hours. He, Harriet Tubman, Audre Lorde, and Andrea Dworkin. But if I had to pick one man from U.S. history, JB all the way!

[image of James Baldwin is from here]

To read the post over @ Racialicious, just click here.

This is What a Radical Muslim Feminist Looks Like

I believe most radical feminists are religious women of color. Given that it appears that the person in the photo is wearing a taqiyah, I'll assume he's male. (The only other major clue to me, as a U.S. whiteboy who is largely ignorant about Muslim cultures and people is that there's a Star Wars thing against the wall--and I can count on half of one hand the number of women I know "into" Star Wars to that extent. I'm sure not "into" Stars Wars and boy-toy video games and such, and I'm a boy.) So going on the assumption that the person above is male, I don't believe most radical feminists are men!!! And I don't believe there are that many pro-radical feminist men, but let's hope I'm wrong about that. At least the man above is pro-radical feminist! The image comes from here: http://photobucket.com/images/radical%20feminist/.

John Perkins releases more truths about the genocidal, ecocidal U.S. corporate world in Hoodwinked

John Perkins Interview from MrXfromPlanetX on Vimeo.


At the link provided below (click on "Economic Meltdown -- A Call for Systemic Change"), you can see more of John Perkins' books, and I recommend reading them all. He and Derrick Jensen are my two favorite U.S. white heterosexual male writers.

Economic Meltdown -- A Call for Systemic Change

Whenever I hold my two-year old grandson, Grant, in my arms I wonder what this world will look like six decades from now, when he is my age. I know that if we "stay the course" it will be ugly. The current economic meltdown is a harbinger.

Panama's chief of government, Omar Torrijos, foresaw this meltdown and understood its implications back in 1978, when I was an economic hit man (EHM). He and I were standing on the deck of a sailing yacht docked at Contadora Island, a safe haven where U.S. politicians and corporate executives enjoyed sex and drugs away from the prying eyes of the international press. Omar told me that he was not about to be corrupted by me. He said that his goal was to set his people free from "Yankee shackles," to make sure his country controlled the canal, and to help Latin America liberate itself from the very thing I represented and he referred to as "predatory capitalism."

"You know," he added, "what I'm suggesting will ultimately benefit your children too." He explained that the system I was promoting where a few exploited the many was doomed. "The same as the old Spanish Empire -- it will implode." He took a drag off his Cuban cigar and exhaled the smoke slowly, like a man blowing a kiss. "Unless you and I and all our friends fight the predatory capitalists," he warned, "the global economy will go into shock." He glanced across the water and then back at me. "No permitas que te engañen," he said ("Don't allow yourself to be hoodwinked.")

Three decades later, Omar is dead, likely assassinated because he refused to succumb to our attempts to bring him around, but his words ring true. For that reason I chose one of them as the title of my latest book, Hoodwinked.

We have been hoodwinked into believing that a mutant form of capitalism espoused by Milton Friedman and promoted by President Reagan and every president since - one that has resulted in a world where less than 5% of us (in the United States) consume more than 25% of the resources and nearly half the rest live in poverty - is acceptable.

In fact, it is an abject failure. The only way China, India, Africa and Latin America can adopt this model is if they find five more planets just like ours, except without people.

Most of us understand what my grandson does not--that his life is threatened by the crises generated during our watch. The question is not about prevention. It is not about retuning to "normal." Nor is it about getting rid of capitalism.

The solution lies in replacing Milton Friedman's mantra that "the goal of business is to maximize profits, regardless of the social and environmental costs" with a more viable one: "Make profits only within the context of creating a sustainable, just, and peaceful world," and to create an economy based on producing things the world truly needs.

There is nothing radical or new about such a goal. For more than a century after the founding of this country, states granted charters only to companies that proved they were serving the public interest and shut down any that reneged. That changed after an1886 Supreme Court decision that bestowed on corporations the rights granted to individuals--without the responsibilities required of individuals.

As an EHM, I participated in many of the events that propelled us into this dangerous territory. As a writer and lecturer, I spent the past few years touring the United States and visiting China, Iceland, Bolivia, India, and many other countries, speaking to political and business leaders, students, teachers, laborers, and all manner of people. I read books about Obama's economic plans, current schemes for reforming Wall Street, and other policies. It struck me that most of the discussions dealt with triage and that while we need to stop the hemorrhaging, we must also ferret out the virus that caused these symptoms.

Hoodwinked presents a plan for a long-term cure. During the days following its November 10, 2009 publication, I spoke about this plan at the United Nations, on radio and TV programs, and at a conference attended by 2400 MBA students at Cornell University.

I come away feeling hopeful that we are finally ready to take Omar's warning to heart and to implement the transformation that will be the salvation for my grandson's generation.

John Perkins is former chief economist at a major international consulting firm. His Confessions of an Economic Hit Man spent 70 weeks the New York Times bestseller list. His website is www.johnperkins.org and his Twitter ID is www.twitter.com/economic_hitman.

Source: The Huffington Post online.