Ann Althouse: Black Men Must Be Supermen - White Women? White Women Deserve Much Easier Lives

White women have it so hard compared to blacks of both sexes

Such a major concern to Ann Althouse it deserves a post:

”It is a shame that we haven’t started a better conversation, not only about the fixes like the day care that was just mentioned, but a deeper conversation about how to reorganize the work world, so you don’t need to be a superwoman at work and a superwoman at home at the same time. That’s never been realistic,...."

Ann's concern, about men touching women, apparently focusses on black men bearing kisses

Such a tiny concern to Ann Althouse, it doesn't deserve a post:

The great sadness of racism’s persistent shadow does color everything for a black person. It can be extremely difficult to calibrate how to express this reality to others. That doesn’t mean their perspective is incorrect, but it still may be better to train young blacks (or Muslims) that they do have to be supermen to overcome and deal with these recurrent upsetting experiences in order to overcome these obstacles. Most white people can only quasi-experience this through movies like “12 Years a Slave” and “The Butler.”

I'm getting Ann's Civil Rights message loud and clear

Ann made a point of admitting she never went to see 12 Years a Slave, which speaks volumes - about Ann.

Some women think this image means they're complex rather than crazy

Jesus, I think I'm losing respect for this woman by the minute,...

I've Said It Before: Scott Walker's Racism Has Always Manifested In The People He Has Gathered Around Him

White women are slow to appreciate their role in white supremacy's cruelty - but they're there

"My heart breaks to see how she saw her best hope in coming to the aid of both men,..."

- Ann Althouse, Wisconsin's newfound fan of the racist Scott Walker - AND Obama's stupidest attack dog - idiotically foisting white feminist theory on a black woman for helping black men.

ADDED - From 12 Years a Slave:

“When [the slave trader's] wife sees Eliza weeping desperately at the loss of her children, she pities her, and says, ‘Have some food and rest. Your children will soon be forgotten.’ It doesn't seem to occur to her that slaves might love their children as much as white people.”

Althouse's vision of black life, between adults, is just as skewed,...

Get The Impression There's No Plan For Getting Along?

Whites know what to expect - because they know how they treat us

Blacks have always had to fight for the recognition of our humanity in America - and against incredible odds:

"According to a document provided by the official, police forces in the same county as Ferguson received advanced rifle sights and night vision equipment between 2012 and 2014.

There is no evidence that any such equipment has yet been used in the Brown case and its aftermath. But such "police militarization" is just one element of an often toxic relationship between minority communities and local police.

Since the creation of the 1033 program by Congress in the early 1990s, the program has distributed $4.3 billion of excess equipment, ranging from innocuous office supplies to bomb-disposing robots and other advanced technology. The flood of military supplies — along with the continuing drug war and grant programs from other federal agencies that provide military-style equipment — has pushed the culture of police forces far from its law-enforcement roots."

What kind of "police force" does this? What kind of "country" allows this? One thats "roots" began, like South Africa's, with keeping blacks in slavery, and submissive to violent whites, naturally. 
American blacks know this:

It seems to be pretty important for whites, to keep slavery's context out of the story, after a cop was busted by CNN calling us "animals."

Because, if they didn't keep the context out, they'd have to admit the obvious:

American "law enforcement," seeing black citizens as "animals," is too-short a step - in both time AND culture - from it's historic "niggerbreaker's" regarding us as "furniture" again,... 

 

Race Men Have Grandiose Ideas Because We Dream Big

"When asked what made him happy, he listed 12 Years a Slave's Oscar win before his own marriage.”

I Have Done Dishonorable Things, And For Them Have Ended Up Here? Soloman, Let Me Weep For My Children

Blacks can be overwhelmed by - but never clueless to - the circumstances made for us.

When black's happiness comes down to white folks' understanding of what they've done - and do - it's best just to let us cry.

TMR cries, everyday, and they do nothing but say "get to work."

Whites are proud of what they've done - the Hell they've created for others - and want to feel pride in it, still.

If - after 400 years - whites don't get that, then TMR can't help,…

 

"Dear White People" Is On It's Way 2 A Theatre Near You

It's a comedy - don't leave 'em hangin' like you did 12 Years a Slave,…

 

John McWhorter: Doing His I'm-A-Reasonable-Tom Act

"Despite frequent claims that America 'doesn’t want to talk about race,' we talk about it 24/7 amidst ringing declamations against racism on all forms,..let’s not forget,..12 Years a Slave,…." 

 - John McWhorter, showing why whites mostly pay attention to him, in The Daily Beast

"'12 Years A Slave' brought in,...just 2.2 percent of Americans,...." 

- Alyssa Rosenberg, showing why blacks rarely pay attention to John McWhorter, in The Washington Post

 

Hoops

These are images from American culture. Life isn't worth much. We know this. The homeless, literally, die in red and blue streets. History tells us this general lack of regard for humanity, and the lack of humanity it indicates, is normal in America. Conservatives actually regard caring as naivety (apparently, even if it's you in need of care). This, too, has always been culturally true. America couldn't have maintained slavery, for so long, otherwise.

Today, conservatives admire the few blacks who agree with them, and it doesn't flatter anyone involved. The rest of us look on, like they're strange twisted racist martians, but foreign to modern ways. So they talk to each other, almost for sport, revealing they both are unwilling - or unable - to acknowledge the rest as authentic. This, too, is an old part of our culture.

Something about the 97%'s simple desire for respect and justice gets lost in translation. Whether that's deliberate today, or the further product of America's centuries-old culture of white supremacy, isn't too important a distinction to the black born opposed and suspect. Not by everyone, but enough. Enough to continue screwing with our lives. What I'm trying to say is, we've got a case, and it's been moving glacially. But, in the court of public opinion, it does move.

Especially on the big screen, where injustice is being swiftly rewarded, and the Calvary is still nowhere to be found:

Consider, that Sterling guy, he's getting off easy,...

Slavery, Racism, America & The Long Road To Nowhere

  Marie Delphine LaLaurie (née Macarty or Maccarthy, c. 1775 – c. 1842), more commonly known as Madame LaLaurie, was a Louisiana-born socialite and serial killer known for her involvement in the torture and murder of slaves. 

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  Racism At Center Of GOP Movement As More Whites Became Republican During Obama Years

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  Michelle: 'There Were Actually Laws in America that Allowed Discrimination Against Black People Like Me' 

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  White Women and U.S. Slavery: Then and Now 

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  Review: Where’s the Rebellion in ‘12 Years a Slave?’

Oops! I Did It Again: Destroyed The Ancient History Myth

Not everyone thinks the Caribbean 10-point plan for reparations is out of the question, and the reason is the same wherever slavery flourished:

 Most of the largest businesses are owned by families who amassed huge fortunes from plantation slavery and, when slavery was abolished, from the compensation paid to them by the British government for the loss of their human property.

By contrast, not a single enslaved man, woman or child received even a penny for the backbreaking toil they endured almost every day of their lives, or for the loss of mothers and fathers, children, brothers and sisters caused by the callous separation of families. There was no compensation for the pernicious brutality exacted against them, or for the violent sexual assaults on enslaved women.

My parents, like thousands of their generation, journeyed from the Caribbean to England. They arrived in the era of estate agent signs that said, "No blacks, no Irish, no dogs". The collective humiliation suffered by people who left behind children and communities to come to work in conditions that many British people found unacceptable and demeaning is, in itself, deserving of compensation.

That's how it was "in the old days". At that same time, here in America, the men who raised me were diligently wearing their sharecropper's overalls wherever they went, as many a good "Race Men" did in the King era. But today, I'm told I couldn't have remembered it, because that was "so long ago". A re-writing of history as sickening as Holocaust denial:

Part of the reason why we’re only now reaching a point in American society where we can talk about the need for truth and reconciliation and the legacy of slavery is that it was such a dominant part of our history. We’re just in the early days of the post-slavery, post-terror, post-civil rights era of our history,….

That's "the early days" of my freedom - which didn't start in '68. 1968 is when the door opened, but you still couldn't walk through. By then, everyone knew whites had took the money and run, though they're now claiming, either, the 400 year head-start was fair, or such it's "old news" they've got nothing to feel guilty about.

Not even lying, still - right to my face - about how the thing happened?

That last quote's taken from a great piece on the great Bryan Stevenson, who adds an interesting tidbit about this "old news" as it relates to 12 Years A Slave:

 Once we learned about that film, I was very interested in hosting a premiere and connecting it with the report and the conversation we tried to start. And we were just being told all kinds of things by our local movie theater,…

...The local people said they weren’t sure whether they were going to show it. We know that it didn’t show at a lot of movie theaters in Alabama, ever. I think during the Oscar buzz, it may have gotten pulled back in. It screened in Atlanta, but I’m not aware of it screening—it wasn’t clearly being advertised anyplace else.

So - America's really changed, huh? Guernica called Stevenson's interview "Walking with the Wind". That's striking, because Ta-Nehisi Coates just wrote:

  We are in America, where our absence of virtue is presumed, and we must eat disrespect in sight of our sons. And who can be mad in America? Racism is just the wind, here. Racism is but the rain.

And, as we all know - in America - when it rains, it pours,…

 

Slavery Was About Millions Of People & They're PISSED

It's hilarious, that a lot of white people wouldn't go to see 12 Years a Slave because it was too brutal, when most film lovers were rooting for something much more extreme:

   “12 Years a Slave,” the story of a free Black man kidnapped by slave traders, has won an Oscar for Best Picture of the Year and a slew of other awards – including Best Writing for a screenplay adapted from another source, in this case the autobiography of Solomon Northup.

But in one important respect, the movie comes up short. Missing from the film is the slave rebellion and revolt that Solomon Northup portrayed so vividly in his book.

My girl, Eileen Jones, is simply torn up about it:

  The first is the opening scene, when Django, a member of a chain gang of manacled slaves shuffling through the harsh cold terrain of Texas in winter, is liberated by Dr. Schultz, who shoots the slavers. Dr. Schultz then counsels the other slaves about how to negotiate their own way to freedom, and Christoph Waltz’s singsong voice is light and frolicsome throughout. Django never speaks to them, seems too shocked by rapid developments. This seems like the film’s starting point on slavery: there is no cooperation among slaves, there’s hardly even sympathy or communication amongst slaves, and therefore, no possibility of united action. We know that’s not true as a rule, historically. But as a genre film set-up it might work well if, for instance, you intended to rectify that terrible state of affairs with gradually increasing sympathy, communication, and cooperation, all leading up to a goddamn SLAVE REVOLT.

So there you have it - if you can't handle 12 Years - prepare yourselves, white folks:

The drums are now beating for the real thing,…

 

What DID Make The Hottentot Ever Get So Freakin' Hot?

The crap is all around you, unnoticed, until you do:

  "When Racist Undertones Make Us Question Our Love of Classic Films" 

 It's good - post-12 Tears a Slave - white American "culture" is finally being seen for what it is,…

 

Whites Should Enroll In Classes For Racism & Restraint

My bad - they're obviously taken a course on racism:

Chelsea Handler’s offensive Oscar tweets are tip of the iceberg

But how to stop being racist? Naaah,...

No (The American Spectator Watched !2 Years A Slave)

Conservative media outlets have taken an obnoxious turn in my estimation. They've lost the plot. I read them, and remember how (was it just six months ago?) they could seem to do no wrong. But now? Now comes a review of 12 Years a Slave in The American Spectator and, man oh man, they didn't get anything right:

"If ever in slavery’s 250-year history in North America there were a kind master or a contented slave, as in the nature of things there must have been, here and there, we may be sure that Mr McQueen does not want us to hear about it. This, in turn, surely means that his view of the history of the American South is as partial and one-sided as that of the hated Gone With the Wind." 

Really? This is an amazing quote because, honestly, it can only be made by someone who didn't see the movie. Look:

Here is a still from 12 Years a Slave, showing the master offering a gift. And, it's not only the violin, he also let's Northrop use it to earn pocket money on other plantations. Isn't that kind? Then how did The Spectator's reviewer miss it? As I said, not actually watching the movie is one way. But there's one more: 

Watching it. 

See, like with most people, I figure the film never allowed the reviewer to lose sight of the fact that, on the screen - no matter how kind any master was - he was still holding another human against his will. The Spectator couldn't find a "a kind master" or "a contented slave" because the reviewer's eyes said there were none. 

Under any and all circumstances, or whatever personal temperaments involved, all we've ever had was slavers:

And a people desiring to be free,... 

 

The Internet Is Cruel

Call Mr. Snerdley: Rush Got Pwned On 12 Years A Slave

“If it was the only thing that movie won, it was gonna win best picture. There was no way. It didn’t matter if it was good or bad. I haven’t seen it. It was going to win. It had the magic word in the title. Slave.”

“There are 200 movies and TV episodes with 'slave' in the title, according to IMDB. How many of those have won Best Picture — or an Emmy for that matter? One."

The First Use Of "What Chu Talkin' 'Bout, Willis?" Began

A Wave Of Compassion Rarely Runs Through This Land

I've heard whites claim - just like when it comes to what life's like in America for blacks now - they're waaay "too sensitive" for 12 Years A Slave's history lesson onscreen.

We blacks - who have to look at, and live, this American nightmare - we can't help but laugh at even the suggestion that's true.

I can only deduce the many whites, last night, who admitted to deliberately skipping a telecast of the top Oscar going to the black movie they specifically avoided?

They, too, must've suffered some "sensitivity" issues as well,...