Racism and the Color of Money - Part IV (History)

Broadly, all groups, but the rich, have been historically and chronically short-changed by American politics and socioeconomics no matter the color of their skin- per below.

I apologize if this installment comes off a little cryptic. I’ve read both the source subject matter and some criticism of this man’s work- namely, that he wasn’t a legitimate historian, his presentation wasn’t as original as we first supposed, that he neglected certain truths while passing off anecdotal evidence as historical fact. He was a socialist, and too many of his conclusions promote a socialist’s view. We should ignore the torrent of truth because of a droplet of seeming cantankerous un-Americanism. There are always going to be class divisions in this country. But the economic and influential disparity of those classes started out extreme, again per below and continues to expand as it keeps stretching into infinity like the outer reaches of space.

One, apparently legitimate historian, wrote this about the man I'm referencing, with his work under question, after some reluctant and back-handed complements: "The problem with [his] work, however, is that it sometimes tries so hard to assault our complacency that it fails to offer an honest account of how political change actually happens." Criticism of one man's historical view,
Kyle Williams, March 9, 2020.

How does political change actually happen in this country? Mostly, it doesn't. Sure, there are labor disputes and public outcries of support for one cause or another, but all that energy spent in view of the country mostly immune to its effects are definitely ignorant of its causes (probably a paraphrase of a Madison quote from Federalist #10). We, the historically subjected lesser economic classes, fight for rights mostly granted a generation or two too late, if at all. The kind of America we have is largely left up to the miasma and stench of power-brokers and corporate elites. I don't know that I'd put a lot of stock in a rebuttal where the leading critique of someone bringing that much truth to the discussion- (see below), is that he's naive, and I don't care if the source of that criticism had been granted, by god, a post-doctoral fellowship from the University of Heaven-ville.

The book I'm referencing is 688 pages, not including a 19 page bibliography.

So, what really has changed.

Well, we aren't gunned down in the back by Rockefeller-hired detective agents as was the case in the Ludlow Massacre of 1914, because "mostly foreign-born--Greeks, Italians, Serbs" who worked for a Colorado mining company and went on strike "against low pay, dangerous conditions, and feudal domination of their lives in towns completely controlled by the mining companies." (pg. 354) So, that's good right, that we aren't gunned down.

However, companies are still bringing in foreign workers to compete for jobs with people who are already here, which guards against strikes and keeps controllable costs/employee salaries low. It used to be the Irish, Hungarians and Chinese, then Latinos, etc. who were imported, now it is Indians. The ancillary benefit of that import, only slowed recently by Trump's visa suspension Trump visa suspension, Michael D. Shear and Miriam Jordan, The New York Times, June 22, 2020.

The ancillary benefit of all that importation is that all of those workers become consumers and contribute to the GDP. Convenient. The importation of tens of thousands of foreign workers into technology sectors isn't a check against black people; that is a wage check against anyone with a certain type of skill set, given their experience. And why pay someone with 20 years of experience who is at the upper tier of the salary structure when you can pay someone else far less, give them a tryout as a contractor, while not supplement what they’re paying for medical benefits, and then bring them on at a severely reduced salary, letting experienced people go in the process. Forgive me if some of the results of this Visa suspension seem to indicate that it is a net loss for America; it is a gross loss for this particular writer, as I’ve already once had my job shipped to India, and once had IT competition shuffle me into the churn of the job search world without my consent. Sorry, but I can’t care if some extra doctors, nurses, or IT professionals aren’t admitted to my country, when I’ve got a mortgage, three kids and the responsibility to fund my retirement for which I’ve been saving my whole life.

The globalization pandemic means that the country doesn't even have to physically bring people into the country to compete for American jobs. The visa suspension wouldn't necessarily slow that avenue for the rich to continue to build their wealth/maintain their advantages. And lord knows that the rich don't just spend their money on homes, vacations, expensive dinners and boats when there are candidates for government offices to support in their re-election campaigns. Since the supreme court has granted free speech rights in the name of campaign contributions, nothing has changed there either, and you can go back well past the 2010 Citizens United verdict to see how much it hasn't changed.

Along with that, there's a recession scheduled about every six years. There have been twelve in the seventy-five years since the end of WWII. A recession is defined as "a contraction in economic growth lasting two quarters or more as measured by the gross domestic product (GDP)." History of recessions, Dave Roos, April 29, 2020. If you think companies won't use any official recession indicators, or plenty of unofficial ones, to justify a dip in the salary structure or to communicate salaries or bonuses were negatively impacted, well then, the reason for lower salaries this year is because not enough bird-houses were refinanced by squirrels in the last 18 months, so you're only getting a 1.25% salary bump for all the hard work we were told you did last year.

Companies are so hell-bent on outlining the ways in which they measure up in the self-congratulatory corporate social responsibility index, in many cases, why would paying an employee the salary they've earned be all that important, as there is nothing left in the self-awareness department.

One last appetizing diversion before heading to the main course. The author I'm spotlighting this time out wrote this on page 441: "The distribution of wealth was still unequal [following WWII]. From 1944 to 1961, it had not changed much: the lowest fifth of all families received 5 percent of all the income; the highest fifth received 45 percent of all income. In 1953, 1.6 percent of the adult population owned more than 80 percent of the corporate stock . . . About 200 giant corporations out of 200,000 corporations--one tenth of 1 percent . . . controlled 60 percent of the manufacturing wealth of the nation." If the pages of the book were torn out and crumpled up into a hat, someone drawing them out would have a 50% chance of selecting one with a fact like that, or a quote worthy of any article someone could write to justify the historical economic advantages of the rich and how little has changed on the topic of wealth and income disparity.

And by god, I'm a capitalist, but there are other words for what we have going on here (oligarchy, plutocracy, etc.), and one of those, in the case of economics, which is something not enough people are paying attention to, is not racism. Pew income and wealth inequality Juliana Menasce Horowitz, Ruth Igielnik and Rakesh Kochhar, January 9, 2020; "Trend in Income and Wealth Inequality.

Overall, the next source proves my point, but in fairness, I don't agree with their presentation of point #3, that "In the U.S., black-white income gap has held steady since 1970." Fifty years ago whites made $24k more than blacks; in 2018 that difference is $33k. I don't call that holding steady- that's a difference of $9,000. That difference, adjusted for comparing the workforce job responsibilities, regions of the country and industry, should be $0.

Pew research- 6 facts economic inequality. Katherine Schaeffer, February 7, 2020.




Point #5 of that same article, is the one to focus on- "The wealth gap between America's richest and poorer families more than doubled from 1989 to 2016 . . . Another way of measuring inequality is to look at household wealth, also known as net worth, or the value of assets owned by a family, such as a home or a savings account, minus outstanding debt, such as a mortgage or student loan." Someone could spend a week consuming and digesting similar articles from the last ten years about income inequality. I defy anyone who can find a reputable site/article which would boast that the income disparity between the richest 5% of the U.S. population has not grown, or is not growing, at a rate that is difficult to comprehend. On cue- "For the top 5%, [since the start of the Great Recession in 2007 to 2016, net worth] increased by 4%, to $4.8 million. In contrast, the median net worth of families in lower tiers of wealth decreased by at least 20%."

The reason it is the one to focus on is because it doesn't take race into account. People can't tell me the larger issue at this stage of the socieconomic game is not this country's problem with the color green. Let's naively find out if that has changed.

Let us assume that there can be, metaphorically speaking, because of the equal mixing of black and white, plenty of grey areas, on any topic. People can hide their thoughts and feelings in the grey areas. They can make accusations and require the burden of proof of others because our world, and our issues, are so complex. This one time, I’ll make it easy. The difference between right and wrong is easy. This time, with a global pandemic and systemic racism as the backdrop, it's time to focus on a new headline. Let’s focus on the larger systemic issue- the historical subjection of the lesser economic classes, and not continue to embrace the uncertainty of all things, including what actually did or didn’t happen, what was or was not said, who was or wasn't elected, which are all things that Oliver Stone focused on in his 2012 documentary about the "Untold History of the United States" which largely focuses on 20th century military and political entanglements.

I ask specifically, so we do not need to live immersed in the shade of grey, so we can declare definitively in order to share a common understanding. Are these pieces of American history not true? Did the events below not occur? Are the rich misunderstood and misrepresented by the man compiling this information? Who is the revisionist- the man who offers a different look at the nation’s glossed over history based on input from the types of people unilaterally shortchanged in that department, or those who are content to nitpick at individual conclusions who miss the light of all the stars because they are distracted by the moon?

Did the citizens in the lower classes not feel and think the way the author presents? Is he providing facts that aren't true, or misquoting the person in question? Please tell me, to paraphrase Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessup, that you haven't brought us here, to answer questions/read articles about phone calls and foot lockers, when the author I'm highlighting has written about a CODE RED! You're God-damn [write he] did!!!

Due to space these are mere targeted selections to offer my reasons for contending our country’s problem is more complicated than black v. white, from a volume of some renown:

Pg. 37: “Only one fear was greater than the fear of black rebellion in the new American colonies. That was the fear that discontented whites would join black slaves to overthrow the existing order. Via Edmund Morgan- “ ‘There are hints that the two despised groups initially saw each other as sharing the same predicament. It was common . . . for servants and slaves to run away together, steal hogs together, get drunk together. It was not uncommon for them to make love together. In Bacon’s Rebellion, one of the last groups to surrender was a mixed band of eighty negroes and twenty English servants.’”

Pg. 47: “It seems quite clear that class lines hardened through the colonial period; the distinction between rich and poor became sharper. By 1700 there were fifty rich families in Virginia with wealth equivalent to 50,000 pounds . . . who lived off the labor of black slaves and white servants . . .”

Pg. 49: “. . . the upper class was getting most of the benefits and monopolized political power. A historian who studied Boston tax lists in 1687 and 1771 found that in 1687 there were, out of a population of six thousand, about one thousand property owners, and that the top 5 percent--1 percent of the of the population--consisted of fifty reich individuals who had 25 percent of the wealth. By 1770 the top 1 percent of property owners owned 44 percent of the wealth [back then] loss of property meant loss of voting rights.”

Pg. 56: “Along with the very rich and the very poor, there developed a white middle class of small planters, independent farmers, city artisans, who, given small rewards for joining forces with merchants and planters, would be a solid buffer against black slaves, frontier Indians, and very poor whites.”

Pg. 73: “ . . . just a few years after [John Locke] had written his Second Treatise [on Government] . . . As advisor to the Carolinas, he had suggested a government of slaveowners run by wealthy land barons.” It is important to keep in mind that the Declaration of Independence was based on Locke’s, among others, Enlightenment era model of government.

Pg. 75: “Four days after the reading, [of the Declaration of Independence]” . . . the [Boston] townsmen were ordered “to show up on the Common for a military draft. The rich, it turned out, could avoid the draft by paying for substitutes; the poor had to serve.”

Pg. 85: “Carl Degler says (Out of Our Past): “ ‘The men who engineered the revolt were largely members of the colonial ruling class.’ George Washington was the richest man in America. John Hancock was a prosperous Boston Merchant. Benjamin Franklin was a wealthy printer.”

Pg. 91: “Four groups . . . were not represented in the Constitutional Convention: slaves, indentured servants, women, men without property. And so the Constitution did not reflect the interests of those groups.”

From pages 103-124 is a chapter outlining the ways in which the female gender was oppressed followed by a chapter about the oppression of Native Americans (pgs.125-148), followed by a chapter about the expansion of American dominion in North America with a focus on Texas statehood, the acquisition of California, Nevada and Arizona, etc. (pgs 149-169). All are suitable topics to explore independently, and all are regrettable in breadth and depth, but none are fit material for a review of class antagonism, although a reading of those chapters would not grant the wealthy immunity from the overwhelming blame due to them because of their subjection of any class lower than theirs.

I could have chosen twenty items from among the dubious historical actions transacted against the less powerful by those in command, given the resources (due to numbers, finances, or lawful or sexist controls). Blacks aren’t the only race or gender that has suffered because of the famous, rich and powerful: (pg. 108) “Anne Hutchinson . . . defied the church fathers in the early years of the Massachusetts Bay Colony by insisting that she, and other ordinary people, could interpret the Bible for themselves . . . soon groups of sixty or more were gathering at her home in Boston to listen to her criticisms of local ministers. John Winthrop, the governor, described her as ‘a woman of . . .’" You know what- it doesn’t matter how that a-hole described her. Giving him a voice is something he didn’t allow her, so to hell with him. Let me just say it was unkind, dismissive and likely, since she had so many followers, dead wrong. She challenged his narrow view of the world and since he was in a position to silence her, he did so. He was rich and politically well-connected and a member of the elite ruling class, so he could stifle her views because he was in control and had the power to, not because he was white. See, there is a difference between one’s race and one’s way of thinking and acting toward other people because of their economic position- no matter the time period. Hutchinson was excommunicated from the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1638.

Pg. 176: “The instances where poor whites helped slaves were not frequent, but sufficient to show the need for setting one group against the other. [Eugene] Genovese says:

‘The slaveholders . . . suspected that non-slaveholders would encourage disobedience and even rebellion, not so much out of sympathy for the blacks as out of hatred for the rich planters and resentment of their own poverty. White men sometimes were linked to slave insurrectionary plots, and each such incident rekindled fears.’ ”

Pg. 177: “The need for slave control led to an ingenious device, paying poor whites--themselves so troublesome for two hundred years of southern history--to be overseers of black labor and therefore buffers for black hatred.” When the Slave Patrol is referenced, keep in mind that it wasn’t devised by the middle class white man.

Pg. 187: “It was the Supreme Court of the United States that declared in 1857 that the slave Dred Scott could not sue for his freedom because he was not a person, but property.” Anyone who hasn’t read much about the meandering highest court in the land, and their inconsistent deference to justice is in for a treat.

Pg. 210: “ . . . W. E. B. Du bois, saw the late-nineteenth century betrayal of the Negro as part of a larger happening in the United States, something happening not only to poor blacks but to poor whites. In his book Black Reconstruction [he thought there was a] new capitalism as part of a process of exploitation and bribery taking place in all the ‘civilized’ countries of the world:

‘Home labor in cultured lands, appeased and misled by a ballot whose power the dictatorship of vast capital strictly curtailed, was bribed by high wage and political office to unite in an exploitation of white, yellow, brown and black labor, in lesser lands . . .’

Was Du Bois right--that in that growth of American capitalism, before and after the Civil War, whites as well as blacks were in some sense becoming slaves?” It is difficult for me to put servants and economically abused whites on the same level as “slaves.” The economic and political elite did not abuse each of them equally it seems. But the whites on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder and the black slaves who rank even lower, have many more similarities than differences, just like today. Not much has changed in the 400 years since the nation was colonized.

Pg. 216: “The stories of the Anti-Renter movement and Dorr’s Rebellion are not usually found in textbooks on United States history. In these books, given to millions of young Americans, there is little on class struggle in the nineteenth century. The period before and after the Civil War is filled with politics, elections, slavery, and the race question. Even where specialized books on the Jacksonian period deal with labor and economic issues they center on the presidency, and thus perpetuate the traditional dependency on heroic leaders rather than people’s struggles.”

Pg. 235: “The Conscription Act of 1863 provided that the rich could avoid military service: they could pay $300 or buy a substitute.” One stanza from an 1863 tune “Song of the Conscripts”:

"We’re coming, Father Abraham, three hundred thousand more
We leave our homes and firesides with bleeding hearts and sore
Since poverty has been our crime, we bow to thy decree;
We are the poor and have no wealth to purchase liberty.”

Pg. 244: German socialists in Chicago: “The present system has enabled capitalists to make laws in their own interests to the injury and oppression of the workers.”

Pg. 261: “ . . . the Supreme Court had accepted the argument that corporations were ‘persons’ and
their money was property protected by the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Supposedly, the Amendment had been passed to protect Negro rights, but of the Fourteenth
Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, nineteen dealt with
the Negro, 288 dealt with corporations.”

The discovery of how complicit the supreme court has traditionally been in maintaining the socioeconomic and political power broker and corporate elite status quo may await you. Enjoy. Purposeful, constitutionally law-abiding when there are no words in that document to base opinions on, for or against, or indiscriminately incompetent, it doesn’t matter. The supreme court has been too ineffectual, not just when it decides cases, historically, but when it refuses to hear them- supreme court denies hearing of qualified immunity

Pg. 291: “The laws that took the vote away from blacks--poll taxes, literacy tests, property qualifications--also often ensured that poor whites would not vote . . . a Populist leader of Georgia, pleaded for racial unity:

‘You are kept apart that you may be separately fleeced of your earnings. You are made to hate each other because upon that hatred is rested the keystone of the arch of financial despotism which enslaves you both. You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both.’"

In fairness, that same “leader” denounced any black support obtained for his party when it no longer suited his purposes. Including this information, just as the author of this book had done, to be even-handed about the despicable abuses of blacks, to show how complicated and multi-faceted is the interconnectedness of the race (black v. white) issue with the green issue, while also showing how duplicitous the power brokers can be.

Many times, antagonism with other countries was manufactured, or opportunities for economic expansion were hatched. Teddy Roosevelt, whose likeness does NOT need to be wiped from the side of a mountain in South Dakota, wrote in a letter to a friend- “In strict confidence . . . I should welcome almost any war, for I think this country needs one.”(pg. 297)

(Pgs. 306-307) The Maine exploded in February of 1898, and that was enough to precipitate the Spanish-American War, against the wishes of many American labor unions. Meanwhile most of the 19 workers who were killed, in the 1897 Lattimer Massacre, were shot in the back. Among them, Austrians, Hungarians, Italians and Germans, and, presumably none of them black. If they were, the author of this book would have mentioned it. I’m including this because it is indicative of the labor v. business entanglements that are hallmarks of the American system, exclusive of any intrusion of the obvious race concerns by which everyone is so easily distracted.

I’ve included the previous example because to stress another point which would challenge the typical 21st Century conservative. If someone defends a union, one isn’t a socialist, any more than one is a racist by objectively calling attention to the missteps of blacks while echoing their justifiable frustrations. I think capitalism is the best economic approach which has been tried, but I don’t like the contrivances, both underhanded and overtly violent, which can be easily traced to its historical success. Violence?

Yes. If one has not been acquainted with the stream of misguided supreme court opinions and now centuries old fights for fair wages, again, they have work to do.

An elite power structure whose biggest goal is to stay in power, like most politician’s prime concern is staying in office- do the masses of people think that independently wealthy, or corporate elitists, who stand to lose what anyone else would stand to gain at their expense, care what color someone’s skin is?

Now, has the race of white people generally benefited (in terms of competition for jobs, salary, homes, etc.) from the even worse subjection of black people? Of course. But hasn't he stood to lose economically by the importation of workers for competitive wage purposes? Of course. And I would rather we not have subjected black Americans to second-class citizenship through the ages. I would rather they were paid equal to whites in fields now highly populated with Indians, green-carded into the country to compete for technical jobs, so that employers could keep salaries low by providing competition to people who have spent their whole lives here, while simultaneously, importing millions of consumers to replenish the aging populace with fresh subjects to help contribute to the nation’s GDP.

I’m sorry, but anyone who thinks the skin color problem is bigger than our green problem, maintained by a corrupt political duopoly financed by our corporate elites, both wanting to retain influence and power, given all that I’ve referenced above, and hundreds of other citations I could have made to further prove my point, from our 400 years on this continent, is simply not paying attention. Perhaps

People think this nation's racial divide is easier to bridge than our economic one and we'll eventually all hold the richest of our countrymen accountable together. Ah, that I would like to see.

The book, from which the references above are derived, is A People’s History of the United States, written by Howard Zinn. If you read one book about American history in your life- first of all, don't do that, but if you do, it should be Zinn's.

The End.

Race and the Color of Money Part III (Minutiae and Magnitude)

Minutiae and Magnitude

(continued numbering from last time)

8. Minutiae- I’m going to preface this next number with- Aisha told Davis to go eff himself and then Brittany and Zay backed Davis up and Aisha was like uh-uh, I don’t play like that bich! Here is the skinny on the actual hubbub- Drew Brees said something regrettable about kneeling rather than standing for the national anthem and flag presentation- Brees on the flag; Aaron Rodgers and Lebron James offered a rebuttal on Brees’ overshight. Laura Ingraham told Lebron James to “shut up and dribble!” just dribble

Let me put my response to all that as succinctly as possible . . . hey, rich famous people- shut
up and sit down- all you all. Let’s hear from people who are going to help fix the problem. If
you’re famous, I probably care less about your opinion by default because odds are you’re
probably a self-important jackasses.

9. Governor Walz- the week of the George Floyd protests in Minnesota stated that Minnesota is a great place to live- economically, educationally, if you’re white. How is Minnesota if you’re rich? My dad worked as an auto body repairman (from which he was laid off multiple times) for most of his life and a janitor his last decade of employment. I received no scholarships for being white and was denied a low-income loan because my mom had her retirement money in the bank (inheritance from the death of her mother). I have been let go from decent jobs twice because companies in this state either 1) sent my job overseas or 2) the woman deciding my employment had a vendetta against someone rightfully challenging her authority. 

I was an English major, who a month out from graduation from college learned that my future
prospects for yearly salary just out of college and ten years in the future was N/A (not applicable). I made it into the information technology area because I made a favorable impression in the work ethic department and was hired based on past performance. So, Mr. Governor, qualify your remarks. Look at the disparity between rich and middle class and poor a little closer. Look at education level as it equates to one’s economic prospects- I have. Don’t tell me it is as simple as black and white. The problem color is green. I have not been at the right place at the right time and gotten zero breaks because of the color of my skin.

I’m not saying the racial divide wasn’t ever the biggest problem this country has had to face.
I’m saying it isn’t anymore. There are millions of white people, still not enough however,
speaking out on behalf of black people, how many rich people speak out on behalf of them?
And people please, I’m not talking about people who worked harder than I have to get where
they are. I’ve got white relatives who do work/have worked 50 and 60 hour weeks routinely,
working on vacations, to get what they have. I’m not calling anyone out assuming I know how
they contribute to society or financially to worthy causes.

10. Bring to mind the scene in “Good Will Hunting”, where  Sean (played by Robin Williams), tells Will “It’s not your fault,” over and over again, until Will breaks down. That’s how I feel on the issue of where we are with this race issue. My wife on Facebook was following someone who had a friend of theirs comment on the race issue. He wrote, to paraphrase- if I’m a guy, with his daughter and a fluffy dog on a leash out for a walk, I’m a father, but if I’m by myself, I’m a black man. NO, no you’re not. Not to me. If you are a guy by yourself in my neighborhood with a skull cap on, pants down to the back of your knees, walking with an attitude and a scowl, and you’re black, you have my attention. But if you have that same gangster attitude, same scowl, same attire and you’re white, you also have my attention. I can’t help with the black man’s uneasiness, chip on their shoulderness, or insecurity; I got enough of my own because nothing was handed to me either. I have “won” what I have worked for.

11. Jimmy Kimmel just apologized for his use of the N-Word 25 years ago- Kimmel. Good, he should. He should have known better. But apologizing for wearing black face simply impersonating George Wallace, Oprah Winfrey, Karl Malone, etc. That’s ridiculous. Again, where are all the black comedians coming to apologize for uptight whitey cracker comments? Yeah, I didn’t think so. John Wayne (“The Conqueror”) played friggin’ Genghis Khan for Christ’s sake. Stupid stuff happens. Donald Trump’s been pretending to be president of the United States for almost four years and at least twelve percent of the country is pretending to be just fine with it.

12. Magnitude- an Oliver Twist. Jon Oliver featured the Police- similar to what Colbert did, for all 33 minutes of his June 7th (2020) episode of Last Week Tonight. Oliver June 7th I was predominantly disgusted by what I saw- from numbers of arrests, stops and killings (of black people), to footage of irresponsible and violent acts by police, to interviews of cops (particularly of clueless Bob Kroll the president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis). I was also pretty disappointed in the tenor of the chastisement which Oliver provided. A couple times I was amused by Oliver’s disparagement of anyone who wasn’t apologizing for earning a paycheck who wears blue and is expected to protect and serve. That type of one-sided presentation is part of the problem. At one point however, and I’m proud of him, he even lowered the boom on former president Clinton (in five different state of the union addresses) for thinking just putting 100,000 more cops out on the street would solve the problem. It is tirades, or even measured dressing downs, of the police, which will discourage more people from being interested in becoming cops. Quite a roller-coaster of emotions, as evidenced by the tangled summation I’m failing at definitively offering. I'm lauding the respected and adept messenger, yet frustrated by his overall assessment, because he so often delivers. His commentary was devoid of the accessory of objectivity which must be responsibly included in any investigation of that length and type.

At one point Oliver lambastes the country wide glorification of stereotypical renegade
cinematic and television representations of police officers and mostly chooses white targets,
who have traditionally acted with the requisite amount of insurgency in the protocol, department
often endearing them to Americans. I friggin’ love Jon Oliver’s chutzpah, approach, rapid-fire
delivery, intensity and even his accent. However, I don’t think the almost exclusive use of
white cinematic versions of cops makes a lot of sense. Unless you are going to include the
renegade cinematic versions of black cops, you’re shortchanging full disclosure. The list of
fictional Hollywood renegade cops is incomplete without Eddie Murphy in three "Beverly Hills
Cop" movies, Chris Tucker in two "Rush Hour" movies, then there’s Will Smith from three
“Men in Black” movies and three “Bad Boys” movies, which also feature Martin Lawrence.
The title of that last example is indicative of this whole point. Oh and the original black
renegade cop- John Shaft- he surely did everything on the up and up and to date there are
five Shaft movies dating back to 1971. Again, let’s qualify our criticism a bit shall we? And two
“Ride Along” movies starring Ice Cube and Kevin Hart; “Central Intelligence” starring The
Rock and Kevin Hart . . . and oh, what about “Training Day”, with Denzel Washington- talk
about your renegade- so, mainstream as a renegade cop, he won an Oscar for his performance.

In that feature of Oliver’s from June 7th, he aptly calls out the toothlessness of misconduct
firings, the joke of Qualified Immunity, touches on the disenfranchisement and marginalization
of blacks. I was already convinced we had a white cop v. black man problem. But whipping
people into a categorical frenzy without quid pro quo concessions is not my idea of the whole
story. Here's the problem- he leads off like Colbert did, by being too distracted with what the
police were wearing, riot gear, etc. and how intimidating they looked. And again, let me be clear,
the video clips shown of the collected offenses of the police are despicable, and we need real
reform all over the country- there’s no way to avoid it, excepting police unions and administrators
and cops with tenure will try.

But I have this question after watching the last two minutes of that episode of Last Week Tonight
where Oliver yielded some of his time to a representative of the black anger coursing through the
minds, streets and veins of all black people. It is important to keep in mind that not all protests
in the wake of George Floyd’s murder were non-violent- plenty of them weren’t. When you lead
off a presentation of the missteps and obvious gross misconduct not only recently, but
semi-historically, of the police and their dealings with people of color, and skewer them for
dressing for an expectation of the worst behavior any of this country’s citizens could exhibit for
the cameras and not include a history of this country’s violent protests, your overall declaration
of who is right and who is wrong is woefully incomplete.

It is socially irresponsible to use your platform, as a rich famous person to mock and complain
about how law enforcement personnel are dressed, and end by showing a video of a black
woman advocating burning everything to the ground on a show dedicated to emphasizing the
despicable acts of the police, ripped for dressing in riot gear. Because, if this woman is
representative of a large number of other black people and I’m a cop, my son or daughter, wife,
sister or brother, or friend is a cop . . . how do you think I’d advocate me and my thousand
closest peers dress for a night out standing opposite five thousand people just as rightfully irate
as her?

I mentioned there would be only 3 of these and I lied, because I haven’t gotten to the turn yet, the
reason I think the problem color in this country is tied more to the color green than those obvious,
instantly incendiary shadows of black and white. People haven’t done enough research- not even
Mr. Oliver’s crew. The police are not at the heart of this systemic problem, though they are a very
significant component. I’m not contending that Oliver, Colbert, Kimmel, Fallon, Rock, Chappelle,
Walz, et al are wrong, but that their views and conclusions are incomplete. Next time, I will show
why.

If Oliver and others focusing on the police misconduct, the number of black incarcerations, deaths,
traffic stops, etc. really want to get to the heart of the matter, they would focus on those who have
institutionalized greed and power throughout this nation’s history. But that might require they go
after the groups of people who own HBO, CBS Time-Warner, NBC, Disney, Apple, the
Rockefellers, the J.P. Morgan types in older times, and even dating back to Alexander Hamilton,
John Adams, and most everyone who signed the constitution. You want to see a systemic
problem, then much more research is required.

Race and the Color of Money - Part II (And on the Other Hand)

Formatting disclaimer: Blogger has a mind of its own. It's certifiably possessed. It's like if Sherman
Klump went into Kohls to try on some clothes with the guarantee that in a five minute span, he'd
shrink to a normal sized-man and bloat to the size of a hippo twelve times.

There is fault everywhere, EVERYWHERE in this contemptible crusade of dubious inaction given
George Floyd’s precursors. Let’s take the sometimes appalling, sometimes regrettable, but still
noteworthy instances, I've hand-selected from news over the last three weeks, one at a time and
qualify and quantify the self-righteous overreach on both sides:

1. Sure, sure, your Jimmy Fallon’s will needlessly apologize Fallon as Rock for a two

decades old black-faced impersonation of Chris Rock. I love, love Chris Rock, but there is a

tired history which no white person is talking about where the socially aware, talented black

comedian targets entitled uptight whitey by mocking a white man’s voice, his demeanor and

his entitlement- (circa Richard Prior, Rock himself, and Dave Chappelle, among others). I'm

waiting for a time when a black comedian doesn't hide his talent by nesting in the shadow of a

white man's "sins".

I don’t know if they let you on stage if you’re black and can’t passive-aggressively rip whitey
and then if accused of being a black racist, probably state some crap about how you can’t be
a racist if you aren’t in power. If your hand is holding a gun in front of one person, or a
microphone in front of fifty, let alone five-hundred while your performance is being recorded,
and you offer nonchalance and hypocrisy at a rate of exchange no white comedian would get
away with, you’re a cheat, you're powerful, and you're a racist, and benefiting from the same
white oversight and complacency, the same brand of double-standard you’re calling out on
stage, I don’t care what color you are, I've got every right to say at least that.

If you’re paying attention and too afraid to trade in reality for some altruistic version of 21st
century social wokeness- get a tattoo so we know who you are before you unleash some
tirade of anecdotal evidence where guilt on the topic of race is the exclusive domain of white
people. Hell, Eddie Murphy put on white face in an amusing sketch comedy skit, “White Like
Me” Murphy white on SNL from Saturday Night Live in 1984, which is twice the run-time of
Fallon’s Rock skit. I haven’t seen any apologies for that mockumentary showing a white
businessman (Murphy) getting a free newspaper and a free loan from a bank without an ID,
given the instruction that he never has to pay it back simply for being light-skinned. Neither
Fallon, nor Murphy, need to apologize. Fallon is so annoyingly fawning over every guest
on his show, and he laughs at everything they say, that I lost what little respect I had left for
him with that apology.

PS. when are white trash faux-celebretants like Kim Kardashian and Pit Boss going to
apologize for acting like black people?

2. Speaking of Rock- Largely, his 2018 Netflix special Tamborine is a disgrace for reasons I already highlighted in #1 above- plenty of anger, a lot of tired whitey talk and less funny because of his incessant preoccupation with race rather than commentary about what it is like to be human. If a white guy prowled around on stage like that, mouthing out how to prepare for life dealing with black people, he'd be ostracized to another effing planet. Here is just one example: "I been gettin' my kids ready for the white man since they was born. . . at my house we don't have fire drills, we have whitey drills." You wanna see something that should be taken off the television, or removed from a streaming service, that is at the top of the list. So, if we removed statues of Columbus (no problem with that) and statues of former major league baseball owners for racist comments from the late 1970s (no problem there either) Griffith statue removed, then Netflix should take down racist diatribes like Rock's or edit them for content, relevance, or precede those sections with the type of disclaimer I refer to below. That special should have been titled- "F*** You Whitey." He barely mentions the tambourine.

But the lines I knew when I watched that special were going to live forever, and be most applicable to all our lives going forward were these, and you see them all over social media:

“I don’t think they pay cops enough . . . And, you get what you pay for. Here’s the thing, man.
Whenever the cops gun down an innocent black man, they always say the same thing: ‘Well,
it’s not most cops. It’s just a few bad apples. It’s just a few bad apples. 

“Bad apple? That’s a lovely name for murderer. That almost sounds nice. I mean, I’ve had a
bad apple. It was tart, but it didn’t choke me out. Here’s the thing. Here’s the thing. I know being
a cop is hard. I know that shit’s dangerous. I know it is, okay? But some jobs can’t have bad
apples.

“Ok, some jobs, everybody gotta be good. Like . . . pilots. Ya know, American Airlines can’t be
like, ‘You know most of our pilots like to land. We just got a few bad apples that like to crash
into mountains.’Please bear with us.' ”

Top 20 all time. All time- the line and the comedian. He's so insightful, honest and truthful,
and funny with so much of his other material . . . you know it's hard to be a comedian, I know
it is, I know it is, but there's a reason we got white keys and black keys that sound ridiculously
high and terribly low way off to the edges of the piano, its' cuz you don't need listen to that shit
so often; lets keep that shit we wanna here all the time right there in the middle.

He’s too circumspectly irreverent to be ignored and that is what I love. I just wish that he’d
restrict his commentary to what it is like to be human rather than to always rely on the crutch
of what it is like to not be white. We aren't going to agree with everything everyone has to say,
but one of those things we shouldn't have to not agree with is a black racist up on stage doing
15 minutes on why whitey is hate-worthy, every single time someone hands them a microphone.
Don’t get me wrong; I’ve laughed at plenty of it, because of the delivery and the truth, but at a
certain point, even the Germans stopped bombing the British. This is a line for enough is
enough, but some yahoo is going to think I’m comparing him to the Nazis. You can’t fix stupid
and that person is probably shaking their head rather than thinking with it.

3. An irate New York police union chief, rightfully so, lost it. (NYPD union chief) Completely lost it. And his speech can go up against almost any impassioned speech by a white or black person speaking out against the police. I too have seen enough about how hateful the cops all are and very few in the news media qualify those attacks, almost none of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) types do. Defund the police is the common refrain. I bet you 80% of the people who have climbed aboard that bandwagon either have no idea what that means, or stand to gain a lot more by looting, firing weapons indiscriminately into residential neighborhoods, igniting passions or buildings without having to answer for their insolence due to the threat of justifiable aggressive police protections for the victims of the rioter’s brand of fairness. 

Neither side has the moral high ground, and they should both stop pretending that they do.
I’ve seen and heard too much in the way of reports of innocents being pepper-sprayed,
rubber-bulleted, or night-sticked at the knees to know the cops shouldn’t have any
spokesperson sanctioned to speak on their behalf with a preface comprised of the words Chris
Rock used in his all-timer from #2 above. But I have also seen an inordinate number of BLM
types wanting racial segregation- the type of segregation where all the whiteys are put to death
for things we couldn’t keep our grandfathers from saying, doing or thinking, because we weren’t
effing even born yet. 

Comedians, short-sighted BLMers, selective revisionist talk-show hosts on HBO, and bigoted,
racist cops can get away with swearing, I should be able to.

Now, unfortunately, enough of those “bad apples”, which refunded police departments could
perform psych-evals on, are dressed for battle and armed like soldiers. Too many of them are
eager to use their weapons and what they feel is their prerogative, to protect themselves,
others, and property that hasn’t even been threatened yet. One acting irresponsibly is too many.
And that union police chief better not have anyone behind him with a history of saying, doing,
or thinking the wrong way on this issue. He was speaking in front of a contingent of white
officers; he better be right and not self-righteous. His record better be pristine, or else he
should sit the hell down and shut the hell up. We should be able to audit the citation, arrests
and consent decree (reviews of police violations) numbers of the collected officers he’s
speaking for, or any cop anywhere in the country and determine their fitness to hold weapons
and jobs.

4. “Stephen Colbert addresses Violent Police Response to Peaceful Protests: ‘Why Is The Government Afraid Of Its Own Citizens?’” Colbert police He makes me want to hug him and bitch-slap him across the face often at the same time. I always wished he was less liberal, now I just wish he were more objective. He is so spot on and so off-base back to back it is like watching a cartoon superhero and his equally famous nemesis play tennis with a basketball. He never quite puts his points over the net. 

His speech has some great lines, but seriously- “Why is the Government afraid of its own
citizens?” Man, you can’t ask questions like that in your ivory tower. You have to concede
where your points are weak before going on an insulting, backseat driver-laden tirade like that.
Because some of those citizens were frickin’ zombies. There was no difference between a
crowd of U.S. Citizens (enough of whom were imported from parts unknown, if the Minnesota
contingent of government spokespeople were to be believed) and a mob of zombies. He
legitimately asked the question, why are the police coming to “peaceful protests” in riot gear.
Because the police don’t always know when the protests might turn violent, and it is always a
bigger pain in the ass to go back to get your coat, when you’re cold than to just bring the damn
thing on a three mile walk in the wind from the outset. Translation- bring the riot gear because
at least you have it if you need it.

Were there too many unforgivable, idiotic, irresponsible and hateful acts the police perpetrated
on innocent people caught on tape? My god yes. But, but, but- if rioters weren’t coming to the
protests with fireworks, socks filled with batteries, the intent to make a scene, the inclination to
throw rocks and the strength to rip away barricades, I’d be on your side Mr. Colbert. Did you
watch the protest outside the gates of the White House on May 28th and 29th?

Can the protestors guarantee the peaceful protests won’t turn violent? No, they can’t. We
saw enough evidence of that the week of May 25th, etc. Curfews were ignored, buildings
were burned to the ground. What are police supposed to defend themselves with . . . queued-up
hugs and the ability to duck with regularity?

5. This one, relatively speaking, falls under the heading of pa-lease- HBO Max removed “Gone with the Wind” from its streaming service due to its portrayal of black people, what’s next, book burning To Kill a Mockingbird, or Huckleberry Finn? Upon its return, at an unspecified date GWTW will be accompanied by “a discussion of its historical context.” Jim Henson made a career out of his inaccurate portrayal of a talking, singing, bike-pedaling amphibian who can sit erect and fall into extreme like with a pig? I made that joke before I caught wind of an article talking about cancelling a show called “Paw Patrol”- a cartoon, targeting 4-year-olds which portrays dog cops in a favorable light. Talk now is about banning cop shows altogether that are overrepresented portrayals of the police in a positive light. Should West Wing, Veep, or Madame Secretary be taken off of streaming services and network television because their competence doesn’t realistically depict the farce represented by the Trump presidency?

6. Police portrayals: Check this quote out- from- Cancel cop shows? “Too often police are beacons of morality who never do wrong. Too often criminals are people of color, particularly Black men. The article makes several references to the CSI franchise. I’ve seen that goofy show enough to tell you they barely ever concluded without a white man in custody, admitting his guilt.

And this quote: “A January report by advocacy group Color of Change studied the effects of
this kind of glorified portrayal of law enforcement. The study said “the crime TV genre – the
main way that tens of millions of people learn to think about the criminal justice system –
advanced debunked ideas about crime, a false hero narrative about law enforcement, and
distorted representations about black people, other people of color and women. These
shows rendered racism invisible and dismissed any need for police accountability.”

Episodes of “The Dukes of Hazzard” with unrealistic representations of rural Georgian cops
can probably stay I imagine. Still, that brand of mean-spirited incorrigible ruffian, almost
makes Roscoe P. Coltrane likable. Better pull that off the air too. “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”
and “NYPD Blue”, out, “Hill Street Blues”, gone “Blue Bloods” . . . bye bye. In fact, let’s just
ban the color blue altogether.

Or, more even-evenhandedly let’s leave the shows on the air, let art imitate life, let cop
dramas rip from the headlines about the treatment of black people, of white people, of
non-green people, leave the shows on the air, do not further edit sensitive material, leave
the scenes that are potentially offensive to people and precede each return to the show from
commercial breaks with a warning like the industry would before any show with violence,
profane language, nudity, or gore. For example: “Due to the nature of the portrayal of the
scenes and human interactions, racial stereotypes and socioeconomic factors featured in the
upcoming content, viewer discretion is advised.”

7. Plenty of sensible people, including a radio talk show host, (and I can see why, as I’m trying to pass myself off as sensible by referring to it), will allude to many of the racist maneuvers, as he did on the air, found in this article- racial housing covenants, redlining, highway and infrastructure impediments, and other forms of racial segregation racial housing covenants. I responded on twitter to his research by telling him he wasn’t done yet- unless you’ve looked into the problems we’re overlooking. Who do you think funded those roads? Who voted on where to place them? Who wrote those racial housing covenants into those agreements? Poor or middle class white people, or influential, well-connected rich people?

Read this article about restrictive racial covenants and show me where the problem is- black v.
white or green- more racial covenants. We have a representative republic for a government,
which means that largely, candidates with the most money get elected. Those elections are
funded by lobbyist groups- “private deeds and developer plat maps are not similarly affected
by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Who is drawing those maps? Who normally falls into the
classification of “developer” in the context of land ownership. Who would normally be involved
in zoning ordinances? Elected politicians, realtors and/or property owners (i.e. people with
money), or lower and middle class white people? Read about Corrigan v. Buckley (1926),
the National Housing Act of 1934, and Shelley v. Kramer (1948) and tell me that doesn’t
piss you off, unless of course you stand to lose something by agreeing, and by agreeing to
put your money where your mouth is.

Consider this nugget:

“ . . . according to the Code of Ethics for the National Association of Real Estate
Boards that was enforced in Seattle in the early 1950’s, a realtor “should never be
instrumental in introducing into a neighborhood a character of property or occupancy,
members of any race or nationality, or any individuals whose presence will clearly
be detrimental to property values in that neighborhood.” As the “residential security
maps” illustrated, it was genuinely believed that the presence of racial minorities in
Seattle neighborhoods would bring down real estate values. Therefore, realtors
encouraged racial segregation in order to maintain property values and sell housing.”

And on the other hand- if I’m a middle class citizen in 1930, 1940 or 1970 and the
neighborhood I’ve lived in for 15-20 years is getting run down and the property I’ve
invested thousands of dollars in is losing its cache, its value, its comfort level, its viability,
or is no longer a safe place to live, I’d move too. If I got a new job and/or had a couple kids
and the space/property I lived in when I was younger is no longer suitable to my economic
circumstances because of crime, drugs and general degradation, I’d move too. But, but,
but, I’d move because I don’t want to be shot by a white or a black man and because I
don’t want to live right next to, or on top of, anyone, no matter their race. My parents
moved from Bloomington, MN (a first tier suburb of Minneapolis) in the early 1970s to
Rosemount, a 3rd tier suburb of St. Paul. Rosemount borders a township still with fewer
than 200 residents according to the 2010 census. 

Houses in these suburbs are going up so quickly (not just the construction, but the prices)
and are so close together, they have virtually no yards, no space to breathe. I don’t like
feeling claustrophobic, paying for parking or having no garage. I don’t want to live right
next to, or on top of anyone, no matter what color they are. We moved from the last place,
in the same city we reside in now, because the white neighbors were a bunch of ignorant,
psychotic hypocritical losers, and we lived on the corner of a busy street.

I like quiet, safety, comfort, trees, birds, space, no congestion and neighbor upgrades.
You can’t get space in the city. In the city- black people’s vehicles aren’t the only ones
which make noise, and theirs aren’t the only guns which shoot bullets; blacks aren’t the
only ones with a big city attitude, and also not the only ones whose opinions should be
heard on this topic.