Racism...Forever?

Not sure if intentional or not. But the writer of the article leaves out how the Mizzou football team threatened not to play if the president didn't resign.

 

And the coach was 100% behind them. Jeez, this president must've been a real asshole.

 

Poet Claudine Rankin, whose book Citizen was being read in the background at a Donald Trump speech, much to the chagrin of a few Trump supporters, is interviewed by The Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/books/20...tizen-american-lyric-feature?CMP=share_btn_tw

Your book, Citizen: An American Lyric, has won the National Book Critics’ Circle poetry award in the US, the Forward in the UK and is shortlisted for the TS Eliot prize. It exposes racism in the US at its most violent and at its most nuanced. Why the title?
I called it Citizen because I wanted to ask: who gets to hold that status – despite everyone technically having it? How is it embodied and honoured? The title contains a question.

What the book does most powerfully is to make it clear that racism is everyone’s problem.
Racism is complicated. White people feel personally responsible for racism when they should understand the problem as systemic. It is interfering as much with their lives as with the lives of people of colour. And racism can lodge in them. It isn’t them yet it can become them if they are not taking notice.

...

“Because white men can’t/ police their imagination/ black men are dying.” What was in your mind when you wrote that line?
When white men are shooting black people, some of it is malice and some an out-of-control image of blackness in their minds. Darren Wilson told the jury that he shot Michael Brown because he looked “like a demon”. And I don’t disbelieve it. Blackness in the white imagination has nothing to do with black people.

Why is it so hard to call out racism?
Because making other people uncomfortable is thought worse than racism. It has taken me a while to train myself to speak out.
​

 

A foolish man once proudly proclaimed "Segregation forever"! He was wrong then. I hope this is wrong now.

 

No. Children force you to invest in the system because they need to be fed, clothed and sheltered. Certain jobs can insulate you a bit from White backlash (my folks were profs at Alabama A&M and at Howard), but in general, the first baby pops out, your freedom to speak out and make yourself heard is kaput. They sap your money and your time. Better to work at a lower-paying job and have the freedom to spend what little money you have on the things you enjoy.

Gary Pinkel (the coach in question) retired at the end of the season. He was probably going to do that all along (he's 63), but that probably made the decision to support the players much easier.

 

I'm the one who put in the request for the title
I don't see and end to racism. Do you?

 

A 35 year old coach getting started in the biz may have told his players "support the cause on your own time, but don't say you won't play." And the Mizzou administration might've said "who gives an F about Pinkel? He's gone anyway." But having the most highly paid (I assume because it's almost always the case) public employee of your state say "I support these players and do not support the president" is still huge. Whether he was leaving or not.

 

Mizzou's president certainly gives a F about what he did.

It's probably almost never the case. That's a misleading stat perpetuated by folks who got picked last on the playground and are still bitter about it.

The portion of Pinkel's income as paid by the taxpayers likely doesn't make him the highest-paid state employee. Nick Saban earns about $7M/season, but only about $250K is paid by the taxpayers, which puts him third, IIRC. And much as I don't care for Bama, I'd rather pay Saban than any of the governors we've had in my lifetime. He's the most public figure who isn't embarrassing the state atm.

 

Its hard to imagine that 85+ males ages 18-22 would all share one opinion on something. I wonder if mizzou was having a decent year and had something to play for if the same threats would have been made.

If they had gone through with the threat of refusing to play the NCAA would simply give them the loss, and I don't think a team with something on the line would do that.

 

Not hard at all to imagine if 50 or 60 of them are from the demographic that endures daily racial mistreatment.

Mizzou went to the SEC and they've now found out that they hadn't had very many decent years in their history, not by the standards of schools the football program can be proud of. My guess is, the players were able to address the situation ( the "threats" you refer to) as they did because they had the backing of a coach who was about to hang it up.

These days, a team that more often than not has something on the line usually comes from an area where self-awareness and self-empowerment isn't the norm. It's not so much whether something's on the line, but who the players are and where they're from (what sorts of racist actions they're willing to endure). You'll never see a 2-9 Alabama team, but at the same time, no 2-9 Alabama team would have stood up to the administration the way the Mizzou bunch did.

 

This.

 

Birds of a feather flock together.

That's nature. Bloody shame that humans can't get over that.

 

Then you have a leading prez candidate slandering Mexicans & Muslims and for years kept asking to see the birth certificate of a president born in Hawaii. Every time I heard that smear my ears basically heard "Hey N-word! You ain't one of us and millions like me say you never will be." Gun and ammo sales through the roof since Obama took office. Can picture the old Fox watching grandpa at the gun shop buying yet another gun "well you know Obama's gonna let the N-words run wild when he takes office doncha? And he's gonna take all our guns away. Gotta be prepared. "

Then you realize some segments of the population are still stuck in 1950s Alabama. And might always be.

 

fyp

 

If you hire a law enforcement "analyst"* with experience as a Law enforcement officer, you can expect that analyst to reveal himself as someone with experience as a law enforement officer. What do you expect a former US Marshal to say?

*Reminder of Abner Louima

 

#PropertyMattersMost

 

I love stereotypes.