How is it that the political interests of white poor people, like “Joe the Plumber” are seen as identical to billionaires like Donald Trump and Rupert Murdoch? According to an article by history professor Jeffrey O.G. Ogbar, “How Conservative Myths Stoke Racial Fear,” many poor whites are taken in by a “twisted right-wing version of history. .. an outright fabrication of the country’s history. … In the right wing’s twisted version of history the United States, at its founding, was a bastion of fairness and opportunity.”
Ogbar quotes Michele Bachman as saying for “different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions. … It didn’t matter the color of their skin … [or] language … or economic status. … Once you got here, we were all the same.”
What about slavery? Ogbar writes, “The right has relied on outright fabrication of the country’s history by insisting that institutionalized racism hardly ever existed.” He says, “In the end, we witness a unique moment in human history in which the most ardent defenders of the rich happen to be the poor and working class, whose sole sense of confraternity rests on twisted history and nebulous notions of white racial victimhood and rage.”
Ogbar says, “Studies find that with identical résumés, those with white sounding names have a 50 percent higher response rate from prospective employees than do those with black sounding names. Whites on average outearn Latinos and blacks, with or without controlling for education.”
From the article:
The right cultivates a mythic landscape of current racial politics, as well as the careful — or careless — manipulation of history. One of the master manipulators is GOP presidential hopeful Rep. Michele Bachmann of Minnesota
Earlier this year she told an audience that the United States, at its founding, was a bastion of fairness and opportunity for “different cultures, different backgrounds, different traditions.” She went on to say (in an awkward sort of way) that the U.S. was a “resting point from people groups all across the world. It didn’t matter the color of their skin … [or] language … or economic status.” She was on a roll: “Once you got here, we were all the same.” Even assuming that she was talking only about the men, I still say, uh, no.
But wait; what about slavery? Her answer: “The very founders that wrote [the Constitution] worked tirelessly until slavery was no more.” Hmmm. Wrong again. In fact, not only did the Founding Fathers not work tirelessly to end slavery, but most were wealthy because of slavery. More than half of them amassed great wealth on the backs of the thousands of people whom they enslaved.
Slavery was so essential that the Continental Congress deleted language that condemned the Atlantic slave trade from an early draft of Declaration of Independence. These architects of the Early Republic were loath to condemn the slave trade that had been so central to their wealth and the future wealth of their new nation. And after the American Revolution, almost every state enacted laws that prevented people of color from voting, serving on juries or testifying in court. The first federal law regarding immigration mandated that only “free white persons” could become U.S. citizens. …
John Adams was … the only one of the first five presidents not to enslave people. …
Bachmann says that European immigrants “did not come here for the promise of a federal handout … or a welfare payment.” Instead, they came here for the “limitless opportunity” that the “most magnificent country” in history afforded them. …
European immigrants did get special federal handouts in the form of white-only citizenship rights: Germans, Greeks, Jews, Irish, Poles and Italians were never barred from the “white only” military, voter rolls, juries or federal jobs, unlike people of color. Keep in mind that citizenship itself was limited to “free white persons.” When more than 90 percent of black people were enslaved in the U.S., the Homestead Act of 1862 gave millions of acres of land to white immigrants. Yep, federal handouts.
There’s no need to list the horrors of white supremacy from the Colonial era through the civil rights movement, but the more significant point — that pundits are engaged in historical mythmaking — should not be lost. It is an insidious and troublesome practice of politicians and firebrands who have relied on a mythic history of whites: as people who never got special treatment and did not get federal help but who now face hoards of lazy, welfare-recipient minorities who are undermining the essence of American democracy and civilization.
This myth is grafted onto a national political agenda that aims to constrict the very opportunities that have lifted millions of Americans out of poverty over the generations: public support of education, housing and health care expansion. The myth attempts to close doors to education and services that have benefited Americans across the country. It convinces working-class and poor whites that they must oppose legislation that seeks to address the particular challenges they face as a class.
No doubt Ohio’s revised social studies standards address these concerns…
… Oh wait, that Mike Bock guy never returned comments … might cost President Obama reelection in 2012 if Race to the Top starts funding racist social studies lessons!
Mike Bock: He let down Ohio schoolchildren and made our President look foolish.
Can’t wait for the video!
Eric, I’d hate to think that I somehow let down Ohio schoolchildren or made the President look foolish. I wish you would write a good analysis of the revised social studies standards so we can have a dialogue about what it is that concerns you the most. Are you saying that you think the new standards offer a “twisted version of history”?
SB-165 corrects some of the deficiencies of the new standards. From the net:
Grendell also gave sponsor testimony for SB165, reporting that in February 2011 the Fordham Foundation rated Ohio’s history standards a “D.” With this in mind, he said, “I am looking to correct this lack of knowledge about our country and its important historical documents.
“We can’t expect children to understand and defend the rights and freedoms our Founding Fathers intended for us — rights and freedoms many Americans have died for — if they don’t have an understanding of how these documents led to the system of government we have today.”
Here is racism of today:
The Racial Violence that Dare Not Speak Its Name
By John T. Bennett
Recent flash mob violence has alerted Americans to a troubling wave of sadistic racial mayhem. A notable outbreak occurred in Denver in 2009, setting a pattern of delay, denial, and silence. Now that same scourge has returned to Denver, among many other places.
In 2009, a four month wave of mayhem broke out in Denver. There were at least 26 violent robberies committed by two black gangs. The victims were — without exception — whites and Hispanics. When the dust settled from that initial spate of violence, victims were left with injuries ranging from a skull fracture to broken noses and shattered eye sockets. The local Denver ABC news affiliate summarized the crime spree:
Black gangs roaming downtown Denver often vented their hatred for white victims before assaulting and robbing them during a four-month crime wave, according to interviews and court records obtained by 7NEWS.
That is not the language of a conservative commentator; it’s simply a mainstream local news report from an American city that has witnessed widespread racial violence.
The first-hand accounts and surveillance videos of the 2009 attacks are shocking. These weren’t sucker punches or fair fights — the attackers swing madly and rapidly with a viciousness that can only come from blind cruelty. The victims, who can be seen in interviews, were kind-looking, ordinary people. The victims were mostly either gay or straight couples. They didn’t provoke the attacks in any conceivable way. The attackers sometimes fractured skulls, or broke eye sockets, and left one victim in a coma. There were a total of 26 attacks from July 17 to Nov. 17.
An incredible 38 people were arrested in connection with this campaign of racist violence. Thirty were ultimately charged, all black. Has this number of arrests been made against any violent white supremacist or right wing organization in the last 50 years?
The story first came to light in 2009 when a source inside the Denver police department said that the department was “keeping the public in the dark” about the attacks. Court documents show that the police did indeed have knowledge of a pattern of racial attacks, but remained silent for 27 days. One victim complained that, had the police informed the public sooner, he could have protected himself. The same group responsible for that violence is suspected in the murder of Andrew Graham, a young graduate student who was senselessly shot in 2010.
Late last month, Denver saw a possible return to violence, as couples leaving restaurants were being attacked by a group of black men with baseball bats. The Denver Police have renewed warnings of those attacks.
The brutality in Denver is disturbingly similar to violence occurring elsewhere, nationwide. In the last few months alone, a young white lady named Shaina Perry was taunted and beaten in Milwaukee. A young white man named Carter Strange had his skull fractured by a mob in South Carolina. Dawid Strucinski was beaten into a coma by a mob in Bayonne. Anna Taylor, Emily Guendelsberger, and Thomas Fitzgerald were beaten and kicked to the ground in separate Philadelphia flash mobs. Every weekend in July, mobs have attacked in Greensboro, NC. In a mostly-white suburb of Cleveland, witnesses reported large groups of “teens” walking through the streets, “shouting profanities and racial epithets,” and one man was viciously beaten while leaving a restaurant with his wife and friends. In all of those cases, the victims were white and the attackers were black.
Then there are the ominous stories that no one has ever heard about. For instance, a mob of 150 “young people” descended on a small, predominantly white NJ town named Winfield Township during a firefighters’ carnival. Perhaps the townspeople are merely lucky that there wasn’t violence. Isn’t the racial mob mentality scary enough that we shouldn’t have to wait for violence before we take it seriously?
It cannot be emphasized enough that these attacks often occur in suburban areas where the black groups have to leave their own neighborhoods and purposefully travel to areas that are predominantly non-black, to attack non-black victims. For instance, in one of the many flash mob attacks in Chicago, Trovulus Pickett, 17, was part of a group that attacked and robbed several victims, including a 68-year-old doctor. The attacks occurred in the North Side, which is 15 miles away from Pickett’s home. This indicates a serious level of planning and potential racial targeting. If these were just run-of-the mill robberies, it wouldn’t be too surprising. But the social problem we’re looking at is large groups, sometimes numbering in the hundreds, sometimes armed, engaging in racially-focused violent crimes.
There is quite simply no way for a politically correct society to grasp these events, much less effectively deal with them. Liberals have reached the depths of self-deception and self-censorship in response. The Washington Post, New York Times, and the Chicago Tribune, have all openly stated that they will refuse to report on the racial facts of these violent crimes. The Los Angeles Times explains that they don’t want to “unfairly stigmatize racial groups.” They prefer the soft bigotry of low expectations instead.
These flash mobs have turned the comfortable narrative of racism on its head. Politicians, the media, academics, and the legal community do not have the capacity to face the issue. The reigning dogma of white racism is too deeply entrenched. There is a small grievance industry built around condemning white racism and intolerance, real or imagined. Indeed, the welfare state itself is in large part based on the assumption that whites need to give more to achieve racial equality, as reflected in President Obama’s lament that the civil rights movement didn’t focus on economic redistribution.
Legal treatises complain that the racist white power structure grows into the bitter fruit of anti-minority racist violence. For instance, the work of Mari Matsuda and Richard Delgado is featured in countless undergraduate courses, and is ubiquitous in graduate and law school courses. They argue that hate speech is a severe social problem and that such speech, along with other tools of racism, keeps minorities in an inferior position (1). While academics dwell on hateful speech, the actual violence continues. We all pay the price, as racial guilt is used to extort tax money for the welfare state, which fosters the mobs. The PC status quo will not acknowledge the fact that the worst form of racism today is black mob violence.
John Bennett (MA, University of Chicago, MAPSS ’07) is a veteran, writer, and law student at Emory University living in Atlanta, GA.
Notice how the mainstream media suffers from the soft racism of low expectations.
Scaring white people with fear of random race based attacks has been a part of American politics since the first slave was unloaded off the first slave ship. The John Bennett article has appeared in various forms on several conservative websites, where it particularly evoked reactions from people who think that guns are a solution to America’s problems. The article takes some real incidents, such as a black gang in Denver that was robbing affluent looking whites and Hispanics in a nightclub district, eventually telling the cops “they looked like they had money” and various other incidents of black on white violence and even incidents like the firefighters carnival where there wasn’t any violence, (black on black and white on white violence are not mentioned, to say nothing of white on black violence) to generate a “fear of a black planet” political narrative. As the Village Voice said about these kinds of articles, the incidents are no more typical of black America than the Marlon Brando motorcycle gang movie “The Wild One” was typical of white 1950s teenagers. Since the campaign to make Obama a one term president is in full swing, it should be no surprise that the main target of this article is the African American in the white house, his African American attorney general and the news media, who conservatives believe gave Obama a “free pass” to the White House for fear of political correctness. To say nothing of the welfare state, the black racial grievance industry and of course, economic redistribution. And this article was posted in response to, and perhaps as an example of, the article on ““How Conservative Myths Stoke Racial Fear,” by creating a particlarly benign if dishonest version of American history. In the meantime Dayton struggles with the level of mistrust generated in the black community when a distressed individual killed himself jumping off a bridge while in police custody. The economic downturn aggravates fear of the other, and unemployment among blacks and particularly black young people is even higher than among whites. In November, Fr. Greg Boyle, famous for employing gang members in Los Angeles and for exposing them as real human beings, will bring his message to Dayton that the best cure for youth violence is a job. More employment and fewer urban legends stoking fear and mistrust may be what the community needs.
These flash mobs are real,unlike the movie the Wild Bunch. They are happening now and with more frequency. There is a word when people communicate on how, when are where to commit crimes: conspiracy. These events are real and increasing.
I agree that more jobs would lessen, but not eliminate, crime. However, just as we have seen in England with the yobs, there are a lot of folks who would rather subsist on government or crime than work in a regular job.
It was Jesse Jackson who stated if he were walking at night and heard footsteps behind him, he would feel relieved if it was a white male than a black male. A black person is ten times more likely to commit murder than a white person. The same ratio is true for black-on-white crime than vica versa. The way to reduce white fear of crimes committed by blacks is to reduce crimes committed by blacks, not by denying reality.