It’s not your imagination: President Trump, who regularly makes a point of personally insulting public figures who challenge or displease him in any way, taps into an especially toxic well of vitriol when aiming his attacks at black Americans.
This week alone, Trump berated CNN correspondent Abby Phillip (“What a stupid question. But I watch you a lot. You ask a lot of stupid questions.”) He said of April Ryan, a reporter and CNN contributor who has covered the White House for 21 years: “You talk about somebody that’s a loser. She doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing.“And at a post-election press conference, when Yamiche Alcindor of “PBS NewsHour” began to ask about accusations that his rhetoric may have emboldened violent white nationalist groups, Trump interrupted with, “I don’t know why you say that. That is such a racist question.”
The three women – all of them gifted, accomplished professionals – will be covering politics long after Trump has left the White House. They join a long list of athletes, entertainers, journalists and politicians who Trump routinely attacks as “dumb,” “not qualified” or some such insult.
None of this is subtle or secret; that would defeat the purpose. For Trump, loudly and publicly denigrating black figures is the whole point.
He is a classic example of a backlash politician: a leader who exploits real or perceived white anxieties by exhibiting a flamboyant hostility to the political and economic demands of black Americans. We’ve had a string of such politicians since the civil rights movement, and that is neither surprising nor coincidental: Like many social revolutions, America’s expansion of civil rights in the 1960s and ‘70s gave rise to a potent counterrevolution.
As columnist Bob Herbert later noted: “Everybody watching the 1980 campaign knew what Reagan was signaling at the fair. Whites and blacks, Democrats and Republicans — they all knew. The news media knew. The race haters and the people appalled by racial hatred knew. And Reagan knew. He was tapping out the code.”
…Trump has never renounced, or even acknowledged, the obvious racism of his birther falsehoods, and he never will. Birtherism – like talking about state’s rights in Mississippi – was a quick, convenient way to attract people ready to push back against black advancement.
“There was a shocking amount of resentment that a black family had been in the White House for two terms. I think it would be naive to overlook it — the irony that one of the legacies of Obama’s presidency was an enormous amount of resentment,” Harvard historian Henry Louis Gates said after the 2016 election. “I don’t think a Donald Trump could have emerged without a black president. Donald Trump tapped into and fueled and stoked an enormous amount of racial resentment. And Obama symbolized it.”
With Obama no longer in the public spotlight, Trump has to play backlash politics with whatever black targets of opportunity happen to be around. That is why he never misses a chance to attack Rep. Maxine Waters, Don Lemon of CNN or the black reporters in the White House press corps.
It’s a disgusting and dangerous business: April Ryan has been subjected to death threats in the wake of Trump’s verbal attacks. One can only hope the fever breaks soon, with the public signaling to political leaders that dividing and denigrating people is no way to lead a great nation.
Yeah I heard WAY too much of this racist and antiblack apologia in the wake of tlj. I argue back and have since tlj, in the hopes of exposing how repugnant and bankrupt these “arguments” are. It’s honestly scary how eager people are to defend the tasing.
I mean I guess people can do a lot of violent and unjustifiable things in the heat of rage and grief. What bothers me about TLJ is that there is no acknowledgment that what Rose did was, at the very least, over the top and uncalled for.
The second part of your ask is an off-topic diversion. The conversation was about whether Rose was justified in using violence against Finn when he was not threatening her in any way and there was no indication he could not be talked out of his plan. I happen to disagree with you that his plan was immoral, but let me ask you a more fundamental question: Why does it matter? Do people who make an immoral plan deserve to be physically hurt and humiliated, especially when they can be stopped without such violence? Why did you change the topic to Finn’s immorality when the topic is about the immorality of the violence used against him?
I think you really need to examine why you’re so eager to justify and victim-blame here, and are unable to admit Rose was wrong without bringing up the irrelevant issue of Finn’s wisdom and morality.
Women kicking the asses of men who treat them like shit… that belongs into a feminist movie. Women being mean to men and physically harming men who haven’t done anything wrong is not feminist and thus it doesn’t belong into a feminist movie. Women hurting men who haven’t done anything bad for comedy is not feminist. It’s that easy.
And it’s ESPECIALLY repugnant when the man so harmed is part of a group that’s brutalized and killed irl. It’s not cute or endearing, it sets the woman up as disturbed and violent.
Along with the more visible reasons, one possible motivation for the insistence that Kylo Ren is the hero of the saga may be a Christian attitude
toward morality and evil. In areas where Christianity is wielded as a tool of cultural dominance, the Christian teaching of redemption and forgiveness has frequently been twisted into cheap grace–the idea that you can be forgiven for anything if you’re sorry enough, and what’s more, you don’t have to be held accountable or change in any meaningful way.
Another factor may be the
contrast between the Christian and Jewish concepts of evil that @jewishcomeradebot talked
about: Evil tends to be an otherworldly, demonic thing in Christianity but is an
all too human phenomenon in Judaism, and Ren’s character in TFA is an example of the latter (link, current link to full post).
Take these together and, for
large portions of a Christian/Christianized audience, someone who
actually feels sorry or conflicted can’t be truly evil because they are too
human and still redeemable. Since Kylo Ren is obviously human and feels conflict about his actions he is just a “sorry” away from a get out of jail free card and the hero slot. It doesn’t hurt that he’s an able-bodied white cis man, either.
In contrast, Finn in TFA is a terrible Christian hero, at least if we look through the lens of cheap grace and Christianity as cultural dominance. He isn’t shown feeling enough conflict for acts
like killing and lying. He isn’t torn up about his fundamentally
shameful and sinful nature like a good Christian redemptive hero
should be. When he does speak to Rey about the shame he unfairly felt from his
abuse it’s in the past tense, though of course the kind of treatment he has suffered will reverberate for a while yet.
As I discussed in a meta arguing Finn stands for the Balance in the Force (link), Finn does not beat himself up even for his more morally complex acts, either. He fights and kills Stormtroopers
in self-defense and the defense of others, but makes no soliloquies about
how he is a monster destined to kill. He makes things right after
lying to Rey by coming clean to her in a confession that obviously cost
him a great deal, and his conscience is clear. He doesn’t even pretend to be sorry
about misleading the Resistance so he can get to Rey, but he makes up for it by handing them a huge victory. He’s an actually
upright if complicated man who acts on his own moral code, and
he doesn’t feel the need for redemption or salvation.
Finn’s uncompromising dignity, his utter rightness with himself, may be
one of the few unforgivable sins in the kind of Christian framework I described.
Mass murder and genocide can be forgiven if you’re sorry enough, but
failing to suffer from your own sinful nature and not needing a lord and
savior? That’s a bridge too far in some people’s eyes. A
man like that is too free and independent, and cannot be controlled by shame or threats. The
antipathy for this kind of independence can interact in toxic ways with
racism and antiblackness as well, because Finn in Earth terms happens to
be from a group that society says are lesser and should be fundamentally ashamed of themselves.
Of course there is a great deal of racism at play in the fact that large sections of fandom see a mass murderer and patricide as the anointed hero of the galaxy, while at the same time dismissing a conscientious and brave hero as either a violent monster or a minor character of no importance. In addition, however, there may be a cultural divide in that Kylo Ren comes in a more familiar mold to many members of the audience–that of the (white) redemptive hero who can get away with literally anything, for whom grace is so cheap as to be free. Finn in TFA, on the other hand, is something altogether different and, in the eyes of many, worse: Someone who is at peace with himself where he has no business being. Perhaps it is no surprise, though no less sad, that the sequel felt the need to violently punish and mock Finn for the “sin” of his pride.
I realized that the only people who truly get offended by Cultural Appropriation are Americans. Ask a Jamaican if you can wear dreadlocks and they’ll most likely say they don’t care. Go to Japan wearing a Kimono and no one will be offended. Please remember that these people have voices too and can speak for themselves. You the SJW may be well meaning, but you getting offended for these people is incredibly patronizing to them because you are speaking for them. They don’t need that, they can speak for themselves. Remember that.
“I realized that the only people who truly get offended by Cultural Appropriation are Americansoppressed people living in America.”
Fixed that for you.
The fact that the people complaining are American doesn’t invalidate their complaints. They are complaining BECAUSE they are American, and when America isn’t trying to steal their culture, it treats them like shit.
Of course Jamaicans don’t care if you ware dreadlocks in Jamaica. In Jamaica, a black guy with dreadlocks is your next door neighbor, the guy at the beach, your taxi driver. In America, a black guy with dreadlocks is “a thug,” “a criminal,” someone you cross the street to avoid walking past.
But then a WHITE person wears dreadlocks…lord almighty, they look so cool, they’re so exotic, it’s so fresh and exciting.
Of course they don’t mind if you wear a kimono in Japan. It’s common there. It’s part of the dominant culture, the one in power. A Japanese woman wears a kimono and she’s not particularly out of place. But a Japanese woman wears a kimono in America, and she’s doe-eyed, passive, submissive, gives a boy that “yellow fever.”
But then a WHITE person wears a kimono…it’s so cool, so exotic, they’re so cultured, isn’t it wonderful how good their tastes are?
Let people in other countries speak for themselves in those countries.
Let cultures in America speak for THEMselves in America.
You have to take an immense logical turd to call minorities in America “patronizing” and telling them other cultures can “speak for themselves,” while DIRECTLY talking over them and trying to explain—with shitty, small-minded, poorly-thought-out arguments—why they need to shut up and listen to you, another fucking white guy.
This is a straight-up lie, op. I can’t speak for every country out there, but when it comes to the most popular aspects of my country’s culture (lbr, it’s always tango), everyone I know gets extremely pissed off when they see it being misrepresented in some American media (in musicals like Chicago, dancing with the stars, some pop star adding a little speshulness to their music like Miley Cyrus). You can’t speak for the whole world. It’s humiliating to see your culture ridiculed and played for the lols, or out-right copied and modified for someone else to profit off of it. ~mod ara
Wow, look at the asshole anti-SJW boxes OP ticked there!
According to op, if it’s an American problem it’s not a valid problem (actually it’s not just an American problem, but even if it were? There are people in America)
Cultural appropriation is something white liberals made up to score fake woke points, evidently
Immigrant minorities in the West and the people in the countries they immigrated from are exactly the same. Like, no differences in history and experiences, evidently.
Also, “Americans” is shorthand for white Americans. Because Native Americans who speak out against cultural appropriation don’t exist. Black Americans don’t exist. Immigrant groups don’t exist. Etc. Funny how OP tells others not to speak over “these people” while speaking directly over these groups and erasing them assuming American = white
It’s different from the U.S. or anywhere else for that matter, since every community is different, but racism, colorism, and antiblackness are still very much present. White foreigners are lionized while SE Asians and Black people are looked down on. There’s a large population of marriage immigrants from Vietnam and elsewhere who endure high rates of abuse and violence from their husbands and in-laws, often in isolated rural settings. Workers from SE Asia, Africa, and the Middle East often suffer from bad working conditions and have no bargaining power under an immigration law that gives all the power to employers. A few hundred Yemeni refugees arrived in Jeju Island back when it had a more liberal entry policy, and the widespread pushback against accepting them has been heartbreaking and infuriating.
There’s xenophobia that can’t be neatly fitted into racial categories, for example against Chinese citizens of Korean heritage who are technically the same race and ethnicity as Koreans. There’s a class element going on here, too, as Korean Chinese are treated very differently from Korean Americans who are assumed to be richer and better educated. There are cultural clashes with and prejudices against Korean Americans as well, of course.
We have serious prejudices against Koreans against mixed heritage. The nationalist myth (and it is a totally fabricated myth) of Korean “purity of blood” has a toxic effect on the lives of people with a non-Korean parent. Mixed Koreans with a white parent are treated the least worst, although they too are subject to unwanted attention and fetishization that I imagine is uncomfortable for them. Koreans with a Black or SE Asian parent are treated considerably worse, subject to the racism faced by their non-Korean parent and lack of acceptance as Koreans. North Korea has the same prejudices, only more violently expressed under an authoritarian regime. I have read reports of North Korean authorities committing infanticide against babies born to NK women returned from China, the reason being that the babies were “Chinese seed.”
A huge number of Korean children of mixed heritage, generally those born to SE Asian women, are subject to racist bullying in school. The first generation of these children since the start of marriage immigration policy are now grown and we should be seeing them in society, but we just… don’t. They don’t seem to be going on to higher education or being hired for jobs. This is really disturbing, that we now have an entire contingent of Koreans who have been pushed out from mainstream Korean society by racism. This is not to say that other factors like class and the marginalization of rural areas are not issues, but racism is a huge factor as well.
L.J.'s Obsessions 