Why Do White People Make Up Stories About Blacks?

“I think if one examines the myths which have proliferated in this country concerning the Negro, one discovers beneath these myths a kind of sleeping terror of some condition which we refuse to imagine. In a way, if the Negro were not here, we might be forced to deal within ourselves and our own personalities, with all those vices, all those conundrums, and all those mysteries with which we have invested the Negro race.”

- James Baldwin

American Apartheid Produces Black's Expected Result

Tan suit = used car salesman. Dark suit = Satan? That's so not racist,...

Last week, Matt Drudge reportedly saw "horns" on Obama's head in this photo, making me wonder how delusional must racists get, in public, before other whites admit they're seeing things?

"If you can strike this bargain here. If you can make sure your armpits are odorless. Curl your hair. Be impeccable. Be all the things that the American public says you should do, right? And you do all those things – and nothing happens really."

- James Baldwin

We stay to ourselves - and watch

It's kind of hard to argue this isn't the truth, which is why blacks - whatever our outlook or station - might as well be ourselves. We can't win. Be clean and we're "uppity." Be dirty, and "it figures." We can't fool white supremacy. Listen to a white man, yesterday, regarding my research on slavery and reparations:

“I seriously doubt you have read those books from front to back.”

"Land of the free and home of the slave."

And that's all a white American needs to make me a liar - their own doubt - to determine I don't/won't/can't read entire books. That makes it fact. Reality has nothing to do with it. (I've finished about 6 or 7 this month.) I can be more informed than any white person I encounter but, to them, it's white supremacy that will determine who's correct. This is why Obama's "clearly, deeply in over his head" to whites:

Concern for blacks - even black children - never comes into it.

They still think they, alone, determine the worth of his actions. 

Manhood to the war crowd is an ogre

If Obama doesn't do exactly what they think he should, he can't handle the office - so simple (minded). That he was elected NOT TO DO WHAT WHITES WANT - which would make his presidency successful - doesn't occur or matter to them. They will use their 6 to 1 advantage in the population (and the media especially) to trumpet another black failure where it doesn't exist. 

A white "education" - telling it like it never was - but always is

Because that's what racists do,....

 

"Colorblind" Racism: Turning Racism Around To Keep It

"I've never seen a colored person toward whom I had any hatred,..." 

 - A racist school principle, from James Baldwin's famous 1961 essay, "Nobody Knows My Name"

"We're not racists." 

 - April Chambers, secretary of the North Georgia chapter of the Ku Klux Klan, 2012

“We don’t hate people because of their race.” 

 - Frank Ancona, an Imperial Wizard of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, 2013

"I don’t have a racist bone in my body." 

 - Paul Ryan, senator, defending his racist comments, 2014

"Racism will never die because people like Crack need it to live." 

 - Fen, a regular racist commenter on Althouse, 2014

"Don't think we haven't noticed, Crack,...As we like to say, the KKK is on the way…." 

 - Smilin' Jack, a regular racist commenter on Althouse, 2014

What Lena Horne Saw When Blacks Met Robert Kennedy

As tough as she was beautiful.

There was no messing with Lena:

Kenneth Clark ran down the numbers of how bad it was for Blacks. Robert Kennedy, Attorney General and brother of the president, countered with all the things his brother had done for Blacks. While it was more than any president since Lincoln, it was too piecemeal. This was just weeks after the Birmingham protests, where police chief Bull Connor turned fire hoses and dogs on children.

Robert Kennedy acted like someone from a suddenly famous family. He seemed insensitive, expected gratitude. She was surprised at how little he understood about what Blacks were going through. It seems he had not even read Baldwin or talked to anyone who had – why else would he compare being Black American to being Irish American, like it was pretty much the same thing?

Thinking they're clever.

Ha! Blacks still ask that question of whites, all these years later,...

All Anyone Can Do Against Ali (Is Tarnish Themselves)

Before Liston’s championship fight when he won the title against Floyd Patterson, President Kennedy took the time to call Patterson and express that it would not be in “the negroes best interest” if Liston won. As one writer noted dryly, “The fight definitely was not in Patterson’s best interest.” Liston destroyed Patterson, setting the stage for his fight against Clay.

The great James Baldwin was sent to cover Liston before the fight. He wrote, in a brilliant essay, “[Liston] is far from stupid; if not, in fact, stupid at all. And while there is a great deal of violence in him, I sensed no cruelty at all. On the contrary, he reminded me of big, black men I have know who acquired the reputation of being tough in order to conceal the fact that they weren’t hard. Anyone who cared to could turn them into taffy.” Baldwin also pointed that Liston had moved seamlessly in the white-sports media from villain to hero, as they were counting on him to shut the mouth of the young Olympic gold medalist they called “the Lousiville Lip” and “Gaseous Cassius.”

Baldwin's Nigger

Debate: James Baldwin Vs. William F. Buckley On Race

1) It's wild to consider the hypocrisy involved, while watching Buckley lose this engagement, when conservatives call Obama arrogant for sticking his chin out.

2) This was 1965 - I was alive when this debate occurred - and Baldwin is mentioning "slavery" going on as he spoke.

Ignorance & Power - There's A Shutdown I Can Support

“Well, if one really wishes to know how justice is administered in a country, one does not question the policemen, the lawyers, the judges, or the protected members of the middle class. One goes to the unprotected — those, precisely, who need the law's protection most! — and listens to their testimony. Ask any Mexican, any Puerto Rican, any black man, any poor person — ask the wretched how they fare in the halls of justice, and then you will know, not whether or not the country is just, but whether or not it has any love for justice, or any concept of it. It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.” 

- James Baldwin, No Name In The Street (1972)

TMR's Dumb & Useless Conversation About Race, Pt. X