Racism in the US

[ShelC]

Seems journalists and reporters are being targeted by police in different cities as well now - Minneapolis, Atlanta, NY. They're being shot at with rubber bullets, maced and detained even after they've identified themselves as press and shown credentials. Doubt it's a coincidence and wouldn't be surprised if it's coming from somewhere near the top. Remember Barr's words that winners write the history. Silencing the press and suppressing information is straight out of the playbook.

[Mori Chu]

Antifa are as bad as the right wing loons ... who would have thought that extremism is not a good thing.

I think the presence of the "antifa" boogeyman is being greatly exaggerated. Firstly, the vast majority of these protests are not antifa and have nothing to do with antifa. Second, the vast majority of antifa people are non-violent and would behave in reasonable ways during a protest. Only a tiny minority of antifa people would commit acts of vandalism or violence, and those who would are not in keeping with the goals of the antifa movement. Trying to brand all of antifa as a domestic terrorist organization is misguided.

I want to reiterate that I in no way condone looting, vandalism, or violence. I do support the right to peaceful protest.

Here are a couple of fair articles that discuss antifa:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... out-antifa
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/02/us/w ... ntifa.html

[Mori Chu]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes an editorial for the LA Times about the recent protests.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... o-the-edge

[Mori Chu]

My Twitter timeline is full of upsetting videos of police using excessive force on peaceful protesters. Here's a cop car running over a mass of people:

[Mori Chu]

Here's the National Guard opening fire on people who are on their own property not causing any disturbance, simply because they wouldn't go back inside from their yard (which the Nat. Guard does not have the authority to demand of them). The officer can be heard saying, "Light em up!" as they begin to fire.

[Mori Chu]

Cops pull two black college students out of their car and tase them in Atlanta:

[Mori Chu]

In New York, cops pull off the protective mask of a black man with his hands up, not moving or resisting, and pepper spray him in the eyes:

[Mori Chu]

Cops in Indianapolis covering up their badges so their officer number is not known / they cannot be identified later if they commit misconduct:

[Cap]

KKKops.

[Nodack]

Antifada likes to stir the pot but as far as I know they aren't into murder.

Last year was the fourth-deadliest in the nation for right-wing extremist violence, according to data from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/antifa-r ... 9fd32de46b
The far right accounted for 73% of extremist murders in the U.S. between 2009 and 2018, according to the ADL data, compared to 23% by Islamic extremists. To date, there have not been any known Antifa-related murders.”

[Superbone]

Excellent article from The Athletic:

Thompson: ‘To be in a rage almost all the time’



By Marcus Thompson II May 28, 2020 220
In 1961, WBAI Radio, a listener-supported station in New York, held a discussion with a panel that included three incomparable African American writers: author James Baldwin, playwright Lorraine Hansberry and poet Langston Hughes. This was epic literary and intellectual weight.

The conversation began with Baldwin, by then a supremely accomplished author, explaining the polarity of being African American and a writer.

“The first thing, the first difficulty, is really so simple it’s usually overlooked. To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious is to be in a state of rage almost, almost all of the time — and in one’s work. And part of the rage is this: It isn’t only what is happening to you. But it’s what’s happening all around you and all of the time in the face of the most extraordinary and criminal indifference, indifference of most white people in this country, and their ignorance. Now, since this is so, it’s a great temptation to simplify the issues under the illusion that if you simplify them enough, people will recognize them. I think this illusion is very dangerous because, in fact, it isn’t the way it works. A complex thing can’t be made simple. You simply have to try to deal with it in all its complexity and hope to get that complexity across.”

This conversation was then published in the quarterly academic journal CrossCurrents that summer. And culled from this opening monologue, edited in the print version, was this Baldwin gem:

To be a Negro in this country and to be relatively conscious, is to be in a rage almost all the time. So that the first problem is how to control that rage so that it won’t destroy you.

The rage from Ahmaud Arbery had barely subsided before the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis officer relit the bonfire. Just like that, the rage was back. This Baldwin quote came to mind as former NBA veteran Stephen Jackson cried on social media, mourning the loss of his “twin.” As Stephen Curry vented on Instagram. As Cowboys defensive lineman DeMarcus Lawrence typed in all caps on Twitter. As Lisa Leslie drew a clear line among her followers.

Rage. Almost all the time.

This Baldwin explanation was ever-present as friends and family, again, reminded each other of the potential dangers awaiting. As the discussion turned to Amy Cooper, a white woman captured on video in New York’s Central Park attempting to conjure those dangers for her own benefit. As I failed three times to have the talk again with my teenage daughter, because she needs to hear it from her father instead of someone on TikTok.

Control it. So it won’t destroy you.

The rage on its own is unhealthy to keep, and potentially dangerous to deploy. The last thing a spouse and parent, a good one, anyway, wants to do is unleash it on his or her own family. So, like many of us, I’ve found places to put this rage. To get it out of my soul, to keep it off my psyche. But it is starting to feel like all those places I’ve used to stash this rage are full. The bins are overflowing with hazardous energy. We’re running out of places to put it.

A muse of sorts I run ideas by suggested my writings be centered on moving forward. I was sharing how I noticed the eerie silence of many of the non-Black people in my life, especially those who like to purport themselves to be my friend. For the better part of two days, as the rage boiled, some of the same people who couldn’t stop talking to me about “The Last Dance” suddenly didn’t find me an interesting conversationalist. He reminded me people may not know they should reach out or were afraid to reach out. “Should they reach out to all their Black friends?” he asked. I don’t know. Nor at this juncture do I care to walk others through how to care about their Black friends. But I did come away with the answer to the question of what do we do.

Don’t look away.

As a society, for one, we must stop ignoring the reality of this rage. You should not look away.

Look around at the sports world. The very athletes we typically shroud with affection, with all their wealth and fame, can’t shake the rage, either. Today’s athlete is arguably as conscious as ever, especially the sheer volume of athletes who are intentionally so. These days, they are voicing it as a collective perhaps in greater volume than ever before. To not listen, to not watch, to turn away, is essentially affirming the very foundational ideology that produces the rage. It is all born of the frustration and anger of being human yet not being fully recognized for that. Of knowing that one’s intrinsic value is being disregarded and routinely stripped. I’m not even sure if she notices, but my wife says the same line every time this experience is brought back to the forefront: “Wow. They really hate us, huh?” It is chilling and haunting every time because somewhere, usually unbeknownst to us, and likely more often than even we’d guess, the answer is yes.

It is dehumanization that has, for the life of this country, made it possible, even favorable, to harm Black bodies and Black lives. It is so ingratiated into the fabric of our society that even Black people have adopted the practices of intraracial dehumanization. The cruel part about our segment of the timeline on the African American experience in America is how easy it is to escape. This anti-Black spirit doesn’t feel as omnipresent as it must have for those writers on that panel. The entire conversation of that panel was centered on, essentially, how much of their experience as Blacks in America should infiltrate their writing. Do they get to just write, for the love and craft of writing and storytelling, without having to inject the obvious and pervasive issues in which their life was embedded?

Hansberry, whose most famous work is “Raisin in the Sun,” followed Baldwin’s opening monologue with a perfectly crafted explanation of managing the dual task of being a writer just trying to ply her craft and an African American just trying to live. It included this gem:

“I can’t imagine a contemporary writer any place in the world today who isn’t in conflict with his world. Personally, I can’t imagine a time in the world when the artist wasn’t in conflict. If he was any kind of artist, he had to be. So that it isn’t unique that we are doubly aware of it because of the special pressures of being a Negro in America.”

I’d contend athletes are evidence of Hansberry’s accuracy. They, too, are in conflict with their world. They aren’t artists in the traditional sense. Their work doesn’t help us understand the world but escape it. Yet, even with their role temporarily freeing us from reality, they themselves can’t truly escape. Don’t look away as they share their rage. Don’t demean them or their rage by positing they don’t have rights to feel or express such — because, as Baldwin said, it isn’t just about what happens to them but what is happening all around them. Just imagine how great the internal conflict must be for those who are so esteemed, as if they somehow ascended beyond the plight of an African American, only to be suddenly jarred with a reminder such ascension was a mirage. That’s what happens every time a face that looks like theirs, or their loved ones, is so easily rendered meaningless. Don’t look away because they are done acting as if their rage can be smothered by the luxuries of their life or drowned out by the faux love in which they shower.

The athletes aren’t alone, obviously. Rage has taken over the streets as protests have again sprung up. Non-Black people are feeling rage — including Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, who has called for the arresting officer to be charged criminally, and white police chiefs across the country — and having a hard time controlling it. We can’t look away from their rage, either.

Of course, as always, ready to rival the rage, is the dehumanization. The idiotic commentary and knee-jerk response to the reaction, while blatantly ignoring the cause, sprouted up instantaneously as stubborn resistance. Just as it did when Colin Kaepernick stopped ignoring his rage. Because it’s so much easier to investigate the rage, analyze how it manifests, than to actually deal with what caused it.

A complex thing can’t be made simple. Dealt with in all its complexities.

There is no single answer to the question: What do we do? There certainly isn’t a simple answer for how to prevent the rage. The answers are layered, challenging, some even unearthed.

My answer is usually to write. Less an answer, more a coping mechanism. Sometimes, it makes it into the space where my craft is plied. Baldwin’s opening monologue was sparked by a question about his New York Times review on a collection of Hughes’ poems. In it, he said Hughes “wasn’t the first American Negro to find the war between his social and artistic responsibilities all but irreconcilable.” Even sportswriters wage that war, only to reach the same conclusion. Yet, it’s what we do.

My writing-out-the-rage process usually begins with isolation. The ability to put on a good face diminishes. The desire to engage in nugacities all but vanishes. The patience for heartless responses and even inadvertent flaunts of privilege quickly extinguishes. Then begins the deep thinking, prayer, meditation and heavy conversations with people in my life who can handle such weight. Sometimes, we calm each other. Sometimes, we serve as bins for each other’s rage. And, usually, I am struck with a thread on which to organize my words.

I don’t profess the ability or understanding of Baldwin or Hansberry or Hughes, or of my contemporaries, a la Nikole Hannah-Jones or Marc Lamont Hill or Jelani Cobb or Jemele Hill. The words to explain the feeling of being reminded of your value, your origins, your potential fate, they don’t come out so freely and exceptionally. Not nearly as does the rage.

So I write. With hopes it doesn’t destroy me.

(Photo: Kerem Yucel / AFP via Getty Images)

Marcus Thompson II is a lead columnist at The Athletic. He is a prominent voice in the Bay Area sports scene after 18 years with Bay Area News Group, including 10 seasons covering the Warriors and four as a columnist. Marcus is also the author of the best-selling biography "GOLDEN: The Miraculous Rise of Steph Curry." Follow Marcus on Twitter @thompsonscribe.

[Superbone]

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar writes an editorial for the LA Times about the recent protests.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2 ... o-the-edge

Excellent. Thanks.

[Nodack]

[Mori Chu]

LAPD running people over in the street.

[3rdside]

Marty / Nodack, thanks for setting the record straight - I guess i've been drinking the GOP juice on these guys. They're not angels I'm sure but not as bad as I thought.

[3rdside]

And it did feel a bit weird writing what I wrote and then linking an article about how they all live with their parents .. if I had to say who's less likely to commit murder and violent crime, it's probably those who's mom is making them dinner.

[Mori Chu]

And it did feel a bit weird writing what I wrote and then linking an article about how they all live with their parents .. if I had to say who's less likely to commit murder and violent crime, it's probably those who's mom is making them dinner.

There are certainly some bad people who promote the use of violence who call themselves "Antifa." And those people should be arrested and punished, for sure. But "antifa" is one of the most misunderstood and overblown groups in the country. There is no official group named "antifa"; it isn't like the NRA or the KKK or Moms Against Drunk Driving. There is no antifa leadership, no membership, no meetings, no organization, no structure, no hierarchy. There are just disorganized individual people who have various political views who may or may not say that they are "anti-fascist" and or that they consider themselves to be "antifa." If somebody is a jerk and does horrible things and then says that they are "antifa," it in no way implicates or involves anybody else; antifa do not organize and plan things, they don't have some shadowy organization somewhere. So trying to paint them as some huge cabal of radical violent rebels bent on destroying the country is misguided IMO.

[ShelC]

Yea that's a good explanation. But if they're dressed the same and have the same goals and call themselves the same thing, it's hard to call them anything else. I think in a sense we're all "antifa", as in anti-fascists, which should be a good thing. But that group is more about chaos, disruption and general anarchy, which misses the point.

It's probably easy for Trump to designate it a terror group as another distraction and place the blame on some unknown entity because he needs to blame someone or something. But like his social media order, it probably won't mean much. I do worry that because it is such a broad term, he can use it cast anyone a member of "antifa" including peaceful protesters as a means for locking things down and breaking up protests and marches.

[Indy]

Yea that's a good explanation. But if they're dressed the same and have the same goals and call themselves the same thing, it's hard to call them anything else. I think in a sense we're all "antifa", as in anti-fascists, which should be a good thing. But that group is more about chaos, disruption and general anarchy, which misses the point.

It's probably easy for Trump to designate it a terror group as another distraction and place the blame on some unknown entity because he needs to blame someone or something. But like his social media order, it probably won't mean much. I do worry that because it is such a broad term, he can use it cast anyone a member of "antifa" including peaceful protesters as a means for locking things down and breaking up protests and marches.

Yeah, I am not sure how he can designate it as a terrorist group. They aren't even a group. That would be like calling all Suns fans a terrorist group. We may dress alike, and hope for the same things, but that doesn't mean there is an organization/structure.

And to your point, all people should be anti-fascism.

[Nodack]

I have been talking in this politics folder for decades I guess. We have been talking bout gun violence, racism, politics forever it seems. Some black person gets killed by cops for no reason and we have a few protests and then it dies. Players take and knee and they are shunned or fired and called anti American. Somebody goes on a shooting rampage and then we have some protests and then it dies. Politicians get bought by lobbyists and side with the highest bidder and we are powerless to do anything. I am pretty sure I have said many times that the only real change is going to occur when millions of people march in the streets and demand change. A few protestors and they don’t take notice. A million people protest and they take notice. Protests in all major cities and around the world that turn violent and destroy property really get their attention.

As sad as this is, I believe the only way change will ever happen in this country is if Americans march in the streets and demand it. Right now race is driving this protest movement but, for me it’s more than that.

I have been especially hard on Trump because to me is evil and represents everything a President shouldn’t be. I have sided with Democrats because they are the lesser of two evils but, even without Trump in the mix I already believed that the system was broken. I no longer believed that our Government is by the people for the people anymore including Democrats. Some may have good intentions but succumb to the pressure of lobbyists eventually. Not only do they not work for the average Americans anymore, they are so divided that nothing can get done. To me our government is broken beyond repair.

This movement right now is driven by racism but, I think it goes deeper than that. Trump wants to think he is in charge and has all the power. The people have been reminding him that he doesn’t have all the power, they do.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
The causes of the French Revolution are complex and are still debated among historians. The American Revolution helped set the stage for the events of the French Revolution, having shown France that a rebellion based on Enlightenment principles, including natural rights and equality for all citizens, against an authoritarian regime could succeed.