Tangerine* by Edward Bloor is written from the perspective of a sort of disabled (but not really? that’s part of the plot) middle school who is white, frail, very smart, repressed, and an excellent soccer player. He is forced to leave his white suburban school and either attend a nearby Catholic school, or alternatively, go to the “inner-city” tough kid not very white school. He readily picks the latter, for some very good reasons, and there he meets his first real fears, his first real friends, and sets about making and breaking heroes.

There are also tangerines, the fruit, which play a special role in the narrative.

This is a book that should totally be banned and burned if you don’t want kids to examine their own privilege, think about fairness and class, or confront racism. Or be mean to football. It is one of those books often assigned in middle school, and this is the time we are reading all the middle school books. Fits the bill as quick and entertaining, meaningful adult reading.

Several issues back, Richardson and Freeman invited Carol Anderson, author of One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy* to talk about voting suppression.

“On this episode of Now & Then, “Voting Rights: The Big Picture,” Heather Cox Richardson and Joanne Freeman talk about the history of voter suppression with Carol Anderson, professor of African American Studies at Emory University and author of One Person No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy and The Second: Race and Guns in a Fatally Unequal America. The trio discuss the concept of the “consent of the governed” during the founding period, the emergence of Jim Crow laws after the Civil War, and the evolution of voting suppression efforts in the modern era. How have politicians justified restrictive voting policies? How do these policies damage American democracy? And what strategies might protect the franchise today? ”

The podcast is here.

One of the great features of Now & Then is that the hosts spend a lot of time running up to the body of the work laying down foundations and drawing in context. Very Maddowesque. But for this reason the podcast can have a slow start. In this episode, it takes a while for Carol Anderson to get the mic and start her thing, but once she does you will be blow away, even if you thought you knew stuff about voter suppression (and voting rights, not the same thing).

Watch:

I have no comments on this, it is obvious how wrong this is. But, I have some memes based on the reaction of one of those present.

By the way if you look at the video, and watch the woman to our right (the one with the non-curly hair) you will see one of the best aborted face-palms ever.

See also:

I can see having a rule about when you can be in the park, and fixing it to sunlight makes sense, and I can even see a modest punishment for offenders. But three months in jail because you thought the sun was still up 15 minutes after sundown? Note to those reading this from the equator: The sun continues to brighten the northern sky long after official sundown, since the penumbra is quite wide in high latitudes.

That was in the Star Tribune, the region’s newspaper of record. In the same issue is an op-ed penned by a local retired cop who has a new job of screaming at clouds. There was a horrific and tragic shootout at a local bar the other day, in which over a dozen innocent bystanders were shot, one killed. It was a shootout among some bad hombres including one with an open warrant. Old Guy Cop made the argument that if only cops were allowed to make “low level stops” (aka pretextual stops) then this shooting could have been avoided. The argument goes like this: Cops were formerly allowed to pull people over for things like busted taillights. In so doing they would also end up finding felons with outstanding warrants, so they were thus kept of the streets. But now with all the “defund the police” talk this isn’t the case anymore, thus the shooting.

Please allow me to clarify a few things. Pretextual stops are not prohibited, though they are reduced in that county and other Minnesota communities as we (the people) pressured our police to do so after a pretexutal stop initiated killing. They have historically (especially when combined with the perambulation version, where citizen pedestrians are shaken down by police officers) are the starting point for (mostly white) cops killing (mostly black) people with their guns, or sometimes, knees or fists. Pretextual stops do cause the apprehension of the occasional bad guy, but not many of them, certainly not most of them. There has been no defunding of police (though to be fair, the concept was implied and not named in the OpEd). The cloud shouting by this ex-cop, who begged to be called a racist in his own OpEd (yes, he’s a racist, there, I said it) was full of misinformation and negative accusations applied to entire categories of people. The contents, factually, would not have been allowed in a news item in a respectable paper. The Star Tribune should not have published it. But they did, and with it I make the following point.

We are a society in which we have come to expect the police to determine the guilt or innocence of individuals they run across on the street, and act accordingly. That 90 day jail sentence for a walk in the park would not likely happen very often. But the fact that it is a crime to be in the park at night allows cops to bust whomever they like, and leave alone those whom they determine either mainstream and acceptable, or perhaps, too dangerous to approach. Then, it allows prosecutors, if they so desire, to try to jail someone for doing basically nothing, presumably on the grounds that they must have done something, even if the cops didn’t nail them for that thing.

My point is that the lack of rigor and humanitarian thinking by the editorial staff of the Star Tribune, which allows them to not notice a senseless anti-civilization rant when they see it, is part of the broader culture of pretending that we have a fair criminal justice system, when what we actually have is a police state that remains mostly benign for mostly white adults, and significantly dangerous for people of color, and others who don’t exist entirely in societies normative silos.

But, there is hope. Ramsey county is considering changing its park rules. Some of our local police departments really are backing off on certain stops. The Hennepin County Sheriff has tried this: Instead of giving people they pull over for a broken tail light a ticket, they give them a coupon to get the light fixed. Thins are changing a little. They are changing at all because we (the people) are putting a great deal of pressure on The Man. But not enough pressure, and things are changing too slowly.

The pottery cone, reaching a certain level of heat and then falling over, is a metaphor for Confederate monuments in America. The perennial racism-fueled conflict between white supremacists and everyone else flows and moves, waxes and wanes, and always generates heat. Every now and then enough heat is generated, and some sort of civil meltdown occurs in relation to one of these statues. This has happened since the very first months after the Civil War. It has happened more frequently, it has been more widespread, and it has been accompanied by much greater heat, in recent years. So, the statues are drooping, in their own way, like the pottery cones.

The falling statues are the direct result of activism, but they are also metaphors in their own right. They are metaphors of a changing demographic. The racist and classist cancer that infects society in the United States is perpetuated mainly by less educated white men, and although it appears in other societal tissues to some degree, that is currently the main source of the disease. Progressive minded people have been engaged in an open conspiracy for decades now, consisting of two parts: 1) Educate more, and 2) make sure “education” remains education and does not become indoctrination (or it wont’ work). This conspiracy has been only modestly successful, so the number of metastasizing cells, as it were, has not diminished much via liberal education.

But racism is becoming unfashionable, and that is probably the best thing that could happen to it. What was once de riguer, or at least, not something one complains about, in all areas of white or white-ish society, is now widely recognized as bad. Active racists know this, and they revel in its badness, with the new war cry of “make the liberals cry.” The key difference between now and 50 years ago is this: Out of fashion, racism is not recruiting from the young as much as it could, and is withdrawing rapidly from many areas it once held sway. This means the source, less educated white men, are aging as a demographic.

Racism in America will ultimately be addressed by the death of most of the racists.

Most people will react to this idea with the following, or something like it: “But racism will always be there, because of the basic nature of human beings.” This is one of the great lies of racism, that racism is natural, inevitable, and therefore, possibly, normal and even good. This is the Naturalistic Fallacy being used to excuse or underwrite nefarious behavior. Don’t be fooled by that fallacy. Also, despite the fact that we find racism of one sort or another in many societies, you need to know that American racism is it’s own thing. Racism in modern America grows out of American history. American slavery, American immigration, American isolationism, the American frontier, and many other things American are either unique, or at least, very different in America than any other place or time, and the combination is utterly unique. It is not some sort of demented American exceptionalism to claim that running a physically large country (or set of closely interactive colonies) for centuries on the back of widespread slavery, so that most of the people in the slave regions were the slaves themselves, is unique. (The Caribbean of course is part of this story, but lets not give this discussion over to the professional historians until we hit the comment section below.)

To understand this better, consider just one aspect of racism against East Asian people in America. In the 19th century, Chinese people, usually imported workers, were viewed, literally and unabashedly, by most white Americans, as subhuman. There wasn’t even a little apology there. They were a form of monkey that could talk in a lot of white people’s minds. The legislation to keep them out, the norms and regulations that gave Chinese workers less protection than the mules that died along with them building railroads across the mountains, clearly document this, as do the depictions and writings of the time.

Today, a different belief about East Asians pervades American culture. While many of the White Supremacists may view East Asian people as subhuman (I don’t put much past them), today East Asians are more often viewed as superior (like how well the kids do in school), of a more effective or demanding culture (how the parents of those school kids keep things under control) of greater physical prowess (East Asian marshal arts have redefined American fighting) and more gentile and artistic (see all the Asian influence in all the arts) all at the same time. Now also consider the plight of the Irish, considered sub human (again, monkeys that can sort of talk), or the Italians (monkeys that can talk very loudly) or the Polish or other Eastern European groups, and so on and so forth. All of these groups went through a period of intense denigration, were the subject of attack and murder, and economic disenfranchisement. Until the weren’t. That all went away. We see almost no remnant in day to day life of any of that.

American Racism is centered on, and consists mainly of, disdain for African Americans, the descendants of kidnapped Africans bred as a slave population on which our economy was based, and from which our country grew strong. This core of American racism is different from the other, just mentioned, racist historical trends, let alone racism among humans in general.

Yes, American Racism is big, bad, ugly, utterly unique, and most importantly, American racism exists because of its own specific history. Anything that arises from context and history can be put down with new context and future, if that future is unfriendly to it. White supremacy reproduced itself generation after generation in America not because it is innate, but because it is very large and very strong, very convenient, money-making, and desired even by those not directly engaged in the most obvious forms of it.

But now, the cones are melting. The reasons racism is good are melting away. Racism against African Americans is no longer economically neutral or convenient for an increasingly large part of the white dominated business world. In fact it can be downright damaging. It is hard to find a city or state where a wink and a nod in favor of racism increases your vote count. Individuals with histories tied to the American racist model are politically doomed these days, but not in the old days, where the “old days” were five years ago or so. Prosecutors who rode the law-and-order wave of recent decades are increasingly inviable as candidates for executive office, because that “law and order” movement is what made Americans the most incarcerated population in the world, with a strong racial bias. An up and coming mover and shaker who wore blackface to his frat party is no longer seen as a mere doofus. The societal and cultural feedback loops have been breaking for some time, but in recent years, they are being systematically identified and ripped asunder. This is one of the key roles of the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” It is an ironic statement designed to pop the racist mole so it can be solidly, and with finality, whacked.

I am not suggesting that racism in America is suddenly over, or that it is going to become unimportant any time soon. Rather, I’m saying these three things. 1) Racism of the kind we see in America is not a mere reflection of human nature, and to see it as such is not only factually wrong, but defeatist; 2) while American racism is big and complex and should not be underestimated, if it was a disease, it would be best cured by cutting out that one element of society that keeps it going, less educated white men; and 3) we need to keep up the pressure, to stop them from recruiting or spreading their culture, over the next 30 years while most of them die off. Under current conditions, with Covid-19, the tendency of these very men to also disdain science may speed the process. We can talk about that after a 30 day period following the upcoming in-person Republican National Convention sans mask.

Of course, we speak here in statistical generalities. Lots of less educated white men are not contributing to this problem. But the demographic of less educated white men has a lot of ‘splainin to do.

“It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him the words, “And this too, shall pass away.” How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!”

• Abraham Lincoln

Class Act by Jerry Craft.

I Am Not a Number by Dupuis, Kacer, and Newland.

Let’s Talk About Race by Julius Lester.

Something Happened in Our Town: A Child’s Story About Racial Injustice by Celano, Green, Collins, and Hazzard.

That’s Not Fair! / ¡No Es Justo!: Emma Tenayuca’s Struggle for Justice/La lucha de Emma Tenayuca por la justicia (Spanish and English Edition) by Tafolla, Tenyuca, and Ybanez.

Sulwe by Nyong’o and Harrison.

Where Are You From? by Mendez.

Hat Tip: Sam Fredrickson, Birchview.

WASHINGTON, DC — The following is a statement issued today from Muslim Advocates Public Advocacy Director Scott Simpson calling on Cherokee Guns in Murphy, North Carolina and Allison Outdoor Advertising to take down a billboard that invites gun violence against Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib – most of whom have received credible assassination threats. Muslim Advocates is encouraging supporters to send emails to Allison Outdoor Advertising and Cherokee Guns asking them to take the billboard down immediately:

“This billboard puts the lives of these congresswomen in immediate danger and needs to be taken down right away. It labels the four women as harbingers of the apocalypse and then invites people to purchase guns ‘1 mile [ahead] on right.’

These women have already received multiple, credible death threats inspired by similar rhetoric and attacks. Someone has already been charged for an assassination threat against Congresswoman Omar where the suspect said ‘I’ll put a bullet in her fucking skull’ and the assassination attempt that wounded Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was only a few years ago.

Much of the media is irresponsibly downplaying this deeply concerning billboard as ‘mocking.’ This is not a joke and it’s not an insult. This is encouraging gun violence against elected officials.

This is also an anti-Muslim attack. The owners of Cherokee Guns have a Facebook post advertising a similar bumper sticker that is rife with disgusting anti-Muslim slurs including a reference to ‘Infidels for Trump’ and an invitation for patrons to ‘eat a piece of bacon’ to receive the sticker.

Food festivals and houses of worship are being shot up by white nationalists and this billboard invites more violence. Allison Outdoor Advertising must take the billboard down and Cherokee Guns must stop its dangerous, anti-Muslim attacks before the worst happens.”

Muslim Advocates is a national civil rights organization working in the courts, in the halls of power and in communities to halt bigotry in its tracks. We ensure that American Muslims have a seat at the table with expert representation so that all Americans may live free from hate and discrimination.

We are all aware of the fact that repression of Americans of African heritage is not the same as repression of almost everyone else. This repression, also known as racism, has unique roots among all the repression syndromes and even racist syndromes known across the world. Those who assume that racism is innate in our species, and looks the same everywhere, are wrong, and that this is seen as a way to characterize racism is itself a form of latter pulling. The repression, also known as sexism and misogyny, of Americans of female identity, is not as unique because it is on a spectrum of bad male behavior found across the world, but it is, in this country, distinct and different from anti-Black racism, or Antisemitism, and the like. As long as we are on the subject of Antisemitism, well, that is also unique. And all the other things are unique in their own special unique way, almost. It is probably possible to characterize the serial sets of repressive behaviors against nineteenth and early twentieth century immigrants of European ancestry as more similar to each other, but that is probably an oversimplification.

One of the ways in which all these things are unique is the timing of the key events whereby society wakes up and goes, “holy crap, we are killing, hurting, robbing, sequestering, and otherwise messing with people with that characteristic? Why? Stop that.” And, the way that happens is unique as well, who says it, who fights, how the fighting happens.

And we haven’t even, yet, mentioned the intersectionality of it all. When all the repressive paradigms are divergent in the hows, when, whys, and whats, the intersection of any two or three can get really complicated and very intense.

This is all related to pulling up the ladder. For example, upper middle class or well to do gay men and women living in a woke community, like South Minneapolis or East Side Manhattan or whatever, have very little to worry about day to day, when it comes to acts of violence or disenfranchisement. The cultural ancestors of those exact people, one generation ago, may have been beaten, fired, set on fire, driven out, and otherwise treated very poorly, and their cultural cousins in other environments (like, possibly, almost all American middle schools) still are. But if you are a well-off public figure who can influence the world around you disproportionately, and a gay man, there is a good chance that you’ve already pulled up the ladder and will not be engaged in the process of helping others less fortunate. This is not a general rule or possibly even a majority characteristic. Lots and lots of senior gay men are exactly like George Takei and frequently engage in a positive public discourse about social justice, right? Except also note that Takei is intersectional, and engages in conversations about issues spinning off from his family history in American concentration camps. So maybe he’s not a good example.

I think I see a pattern. If you are in any repressed, currently repressed, group, you may notice that members of a previously repressed group, or perhaps a less-repressed-these-days group, seem to not care about you and your people. This may lead to resentment, and ladder-pushing. This is sort of the opposite of ladder pulling. Instead of being on top and raising the ladder quickly behind you, you are still on the bottom, actively, resentfully, kicking the ladder of the previously laddered-up folks. This is what straight black inappropriate humor about gay people feels like to me, as an example resonant with current news. There is a long history of black leaders, mainly religious, being very clear that gay rights are not actual rights.

On the other hand, if you are a member of such a group twice, i.e., if your experience is intersectional, you might be a lot more likely to be actively building ladders or ladder parts and handing them around freely. Some of the most intense, active, and energetic civil rights fighters are personally intersectional or are engaged in intersectional thinking. This conversation and this activism is all very fraught, very energetic, very likely to be the next wave. See the film The New Black by Yoruba Richen, go to a pride march, read a book, read the news.

So, that’s my clear as mud thinking on this issue. I’m disconcerted with the way we have come to treat allies lately, and I wonder if that strategically awful shift is a natural counterbalance to the way allies have treated those in need of allies, pulling up all the ladders and all. I wonder if we can have a conversation in which we cooperate to identify the causes of repression in our own previews, and work actively on them. For example, citizen or grassroots activists groups around the country, regardless of which cause or causes they focus on, should always speak out and act out when any identifiable repression happens in their local schools. The cost of a transgender high school student getting pried out of a bathroom stall like a criminalized oyster should be huge to the school in which such a thing happens, the cost should be huge for the school administrators, the cost should be huge for the school district, and the cost should be huge for the school board, the cost itself exacted, hugely, from all of the grassroots groups in the area working on gun violence, health care, climate change, and the rest of it. Everybody should have a ladder that we drop in place when needed, not a hand on a ladder ready to pull it up.

Are you a member of one or more activist groups? I know, we don’t want to be distracted from our missions, and we don’t want to muddle our messages. But there are probably ways we can retain our focus, keep our edge sharp, and at the same time, participate in the broader social and environmental justice movements. If that became normal and common, I imagine ladder pushing and pulling would be attenuated, and allies would grow stronger, more realistic, and more effective.

As Europeans, and Seth is concerned mainly with the British, explored and conquered, colonizing and creating the empire on which the sun could never set no matter how hard it tried, they got sick. They also observed other people getting sick. And, they encountered a wide range of physiological or biosocial phenomena that were unfamiliar and often linked (in real or in the head) to disease. A key cultural imperative of British Colonials as to racialize their explanations for things, including disease. The science available through the 18th and 19th century was inadequate to address questions that kept rising. Like, why did a Brit get sick on his first visit to a plantation in Jamaica, but on return a few years later, did not get as sick? If you have a model where people of different races have specific diseases and immunities in their very nature, how do you explain that sort of phenomenon? How might the widely held, or at least somewhat widely held, concept of polygenism, have explained things? This is an early version of the multi-regional hypothesis, but more extreme, in which god created each type of human independently where we find them, and we are all different species. (Agassiz, with his advanced but highly imperfect geological understanding, thought the earth was totally frozen over with each ice age, and repopulated with these polygenetic populations of not just humans, but all the organisms, after each thaw).

Seth weaves together considerations of slavery and abolition, colonialism, race, geography, gender, and illness. This is an academic book, but at the same time, something of a page turner. Anyone interested in disease, colonial history, and race, will want to re-excavate the British colonial world, looking at disease, illness, and racial thinking, with Suman Seth as your guide. I highly recommend this book.