Democrat Monopoly Power Over The Black Vote

BAR  |  The Biden-Trump confrontation revealed, with crystalline clarity, that the real “genius” of the American electoral process is its total imperviousness to popular demands for a healthier, more just and less economically precarious society and a peaceful, ecologically stable world. Instead, the Democratic alternative to the white supremacist Republican in the White House is — another lifelong racist, mass-incarcerating, corporate-serving, warmongering old white man. 

“The party is me, right now. I am the Democratic Party,” Joe Biden shot back at the “clown” Donald Trump, who repeatedly tried to associate the former vice president with the Green New Deal, Medicare for All and Black Lives Matter demands to rein in the police — all issues supported by super-majorities of Democrats, and even large chunks of Republican voters, but opposed by the candidate now representing the Party. 

“You just lost the left,” Trump twice hollered, wishfully. In an actual democracy the Democrats would, indeed, have committed political suicide by nominating a corporate hack and career race-baiter like Biden as their standard-bearer. But the U.S. is a corporate dictatorship where the rich have two parties and the rest of us effectively have none. 

The voters that Trump referred to in the debate as “the left,” are actually at the center of the U.S. political spectrum, where super-majorities favor the positions taken by Bernie Sanders during the primaries. Exit polls in South Carolina and on “Super Tuesday” showed that the same Democrats that voted for Joe Biden nevertheless favored Sanders’ positions on the issues, but opted for Biden in fear of Trump and his rabid White Man’s Party. It’s a simple formula that allows Democrats to promise their base nothing — except that they are not Trump or some other flagrant racist.

“The U.S. is a corporate dictatorship where the rich have two parties and the rest of us effectively have none.”

The trick will continue to work until voters, especially Blacks, stop rewarding Democrats for their serial betrayals. There is nothing smart or “strategic” about falling for the same trick every election cycle – and anybody that tells you different is in on the con game.

Jessica Krug Performed "Blackness", Just Not As Well Or As Usefully As Obama Or Kamala...,

jacobinmag |  Simply put, Jessica Krug was a minstrel act, a racist caricature. But while Krug’s persona was certainly offensive, what’s far more offensive is that there is a demand for this kind of performance in liberal academic circles.

I don’t know George Washington University history professor Jessica Krug. I have no special insights into either her motives or personal struggles, nor do I have any reason to feel personally betrayed by the recent revelations that she had been passing for black for many years.

But while the court of public opinion has already found her guilty of at least one, perpetual count of “cultural appropriation,” in my view this conclusion misses the mark. To be clear, if I did not find “Jess La Bombalera” offensive, I wouldn’t have bothered writing this essay. Still, if one considers, first, that culture — the folk’s shared sensibilities informed by common experiences — exists, on some level, to be appropriated, second, the variety of black experiences precludes the existence of a singular black culture, and third, the implications for mass culture of thirty-years of mainstream hip hop, then calling Krug’s performance “appropriation of black culture” only compounds the problem Krug personifies.

If Krug is not guilty of appropriating “black culture,” she is guilty of attempting to establish her bona fides as a scholar of black people through a persona that both pandered to and reinforced commonplace stereotypes about black and brown people. Simply put, Krug was a minstrel act, a racist caricature.

But while Krug’s persona was certainly offensive, what’s far more offensive is that there is a demand for this kind of performance in some liberal academic circles.

Because I’ve lived most of my life either on the near periphery or within academia, I’ve had nearly four decades of experience with the creepy essentialist language of “racial authenticity” that lives and thrives in more than one corner of putatively liberal academia. As a result, I learned a long time ago that some white liberals expect black and brown people to “perform” in ways that comport with their well-meaning, usually underclass-informed, and fundamentally racist expectations of black people.

Why Was It More Fun For Kansas City Jewess Jessica Krug To Pretend Afro-Latina Than Be Herself?

timesofisrael  |  According to her bio on the George Washington University website, among Krug’s areas of expertise are Africa, Latin America and African American History. She has written two books, including “Fugitive Modernities.” 

“My ancestors, unknown, unnamed, who bled life into a future they had no reason to believe could or should exist. My brother, the fastest, the smartest, the most charming of us all. Those whose names I cannot say for their own safety, whether in my barrio, in Angola, or in Brazil,” she wrote in the introduction.

Krug also reportedly used the name Jess La Bombalera in activist circles.

A student who took a class with Krug in 2019 said she was “shocked” the professor lied.

“It was the last thing on my mind to think she was lying. I would think I had the details confused,” Anmol Goraya told CNN.

George Washington University said it was aware of Krug’s post but wouldn’t further comment.

Krug’s admission was similar to that of Rachel Dolezal, who in 2015 stepped down as the head of a local NAACP chapter after her parents said she had been posing as Black for years but was actually white.

Cancel Adolph Reed? Many On The Left Have A Militant Objection To Thinking Analytically

NYTimes |  “An obsession with disparities of race has colonized the thinking of left and liberal types,” Professor Reed told me. “There’s this insistence that race and racism are fundamental determinants of all Black people’s existence.”

These battles are not new: In the late 19th century, Socialists wrestled with their own racism and debated the extent to which they should try to build a multiracial organization. Eugene Debs, who ran for president five times, was muscular in his insistence that his party advocate racial equality. Similar questions roiled the civil rights and Black power movements of the 1960s.

But the debate has been reignited by the spread of the deadly virus and the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. And it has taken on a generational tone, as Socialism — in the 1980s largely the redoubt of aging leftists — now attracts many younger people eager to reshape organizations like the Democratic Socialists of America, which has existed in various permutations since the 1920s. (A Gallup poll late last year found that Socialism is now as popular as capitalism among people aged 18 to 39.)

The D.S.A. now has more than 70,000 members nationally and 5,800 in New York — and their average age now hovers in the early 30s. While the party is much smaller than, say, Democrats and Republicans, it has become an unlikely kingmaker, helping fuel the victories of Democratic Party candidates such as Ms. Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who beat a longtime Democratic incumbent in a June primary.

In years past, the D.S.A. had welcomed Professor Reed as a speaker. But younger members, chafing at their Covid-19 isolation and throwing themselves into “Defund the Police” and anti-Trump protests, were angered to learn of the invitation extended to him.

“People have very strong concerns,” Chi Anunwa, co-chair of D.S.A.’s New York chapter, said on a Zoom call. They said “the talk was too dismissive of racial disparities at a very tense point in American life.”

Professor Taylor of Princeton said Professor Reed should have known his planned talk on Covid-19 and the dangers of obsessing about racial disparities would register as “a provocation. It was quite incendiary.”

Black Political Agenda: Defund Israel/Deport All Replacement Negroes

Affirmative action is based on a view of equal protection that compensates for historical and present prejudice and lack of opportunity. It is premised on the notion that some of us start behind the eight ball and need an extra boost to achieve basic access. Favorable treatment for blacks is controversial because it appears to be applied in zero sum contexts. If you favor a black person, you have to disfavor a white one and that's the seasoning upon which Mr. Blum's cases are all based. It is not the definition of equal that causes the controversy. it is the adverse effect on whites, or in this case, proxy white replacement negroes. 

In the case of Harvard University, it would be trivial to favor blacks while protecting replacement negroes serving as proxies for poor whites. You see, kibutzim Blum pretends to be unaware of the historic legacy of Blacks in America - thus his elite racist bootlicking antics. Blum could of course trivially solve the zero sum angle he seeks to exploit by going after the 30% + alumni legacy admissions. Blum lacks the historical perspective, ethical fiber, and testicular fortitude to go after any elite affirmative action, well, because, these selfsame racist elites are the folks who pay his bills.

Ivy League "affirmative action" began shortly after World War II. It was stimulated by the GI Bill, which made college possible for veterans who never would have dreamed of going to college, let alone to an Ivy League university. The GI Bill demonstrated there was untapped national talent out in flyover. They found public high school students in the South, Midwest, and Far West with school records rivaling the best of the prep schools. Even when some public high school scores were slightly lower than preppy competitors, admissions committees sometimes chose the provincial public high school student over the privileged alumni legacy. They recognized high achievement in the face of educational and cultural disadvantage.

As a consequence, Harvard and its Ivy sisters began recruiting a few good men out beyond the inbred Lovecraftian prep schools and elite academies of New England and the Atlantic Coast. The Ivies understood that there was more promise in the lesser academic record than in the marginally better academic record. Moreover, they wanted a more diverse student body. 

This was the original affirmative action”. It transformed the Ivies into truly national and meritocratic institutions instead of elite regional colleges for those with wealth, privilege, and pedigree. Only when the same principles of national diversity and meritocratic selection—based on recognition of high achievement and the overcoming of disadvantages—came to include black student admissions,  did we experience white backlash and resentment.

NYTimes |  At the heart of the case is whether Harvard’s admissions staff hold Asian-Americans to higher standards than applicants of other racial or ethnic groups, and whether they use subjective measures, like personal scores, to cap the number of Asian students accepted to the school.

“Harvard today engages in the same kind of discrimination and stereotyping that it used to justify quotas on Jewish applicants in the 1920s and 1930s,” Students for Fair Admissions said in a court filing.

Harvard, which admitted less than 5 percent of its applicants this year, said that its own analysis did not find discrimination.

A trial in the case has been scheduled for October.

WaPo Making Up New Concepts of Tribalism to Claim "Trump Voters Are Wayciss"

WaPo |  You remember the photo, taken in early August, of two men at an Ohio Trump rally whose matching T-shirts read, “I’d rather be a Russian than a Democrat.” (Now you can buy them online for $14.) It was a gibe that spoke to our moment. The Republican brand — as with presidential nominees John McCain and Mitt Romney — used to be pointedly anti-Russian; Romney called Moscow our chief global enemy. In the Trump era, though, you can be a Republican Russophile for whom Vladi­mir Putin is a defender of conservative values. American politics, it has become plain, is driven less by ideological commitments than by partisan identities — less by what we think than by what we are. Identity precedes ideology.

“The Democratic Party today is divided over whether it wants to focus on the economy or identity,” the veteran strategist and pollster Stanley B. Greenberg, a man of the economy-first school, has said. But once you come to grips with the potency of partisan-identity politics, the binary falls away. So does the assumption that the great majority of Republicans who support Trump are drawn to his noxious views. (That’s the good news in the bad news.) Among candidates who led in the Republican primaries, after all, his percentage of the vote was the lowest in nearly half a century. Identity groups come to rally behind their leaders, and partisan identification wouldn’t be so stable if it didn’t allow for a great deal of ideological flexibility. That’s why rank-and-file Republicans could go from “We need to stand up to Putin!” to “Why wouldn’t we want to get along with Putin?” in the time it takes to say: Rubio’s out, Trump’s in.

What’s true of partisan allegiance is true of ideological allegiance. In research published earlier this year, political scientist Lilliana Mason conducted a national survey that determined where people stood on various hot-button issues: same-sex marriage, abortion, gun control, immigration, the Affordable Care Act, the deficit. Then they were asked how they felt about spending time with liberals or conservatives. About becoming friends with one. About marrying one.

Systemwide Training Will Not Correct Imaginary Systemic Racism In Starbucks

NewYorker |  Elijah Anderson, a professor of sociology and African-American studies at Yale, has spent much of his career exploring the dynamics of African-American life in mostly black urban environments. Three years ago, however, he published a paper, titled “The White Space,” which looked at the racial complexities of mostly white urban environments. “The city’s public spaces, workplaces and neighborhoods may now be conceptualized as a mosaic of white spaces, black spaces and cosmopolitan spaces,” Anderson wrote. The white spaces are an environment in which blacks are “typically absent, not expected, or marginalized.”

Academics are commonly dogged by questions of how their research applies to the real world. Anderson has faced the opposite: a scroll of headlines and social-media posts that, like a mad data set liberated from its spreadsheet, seem intent on confirming the validity of his argument. The most notable recent case in point occurred on April 12th, when a white employee of a Starbucks in Philadelphia called the police on two young black men, Rashon Nelson and Donte Robinson, who asked to use the rest room before they had ordered anything. They were arrested on suspicion of trespassing; it turned out that they had been waiting for a business associate to join them.

The incident was both disturbing and disturbingly common. A few days later, an employee at a New Jersey gym called the police, on the suspicion that two black men using the facility had not paid; they had. A couple of weeks after that, a woman in California called the police on three black women whom she thought were behaving suspiciously. They were actually carrying bags out of a house they had rented on Airbnb. Earlier this month, a white student at Yale called the police on a black graduate student for exhibiting behavior that struck her as suspicious: napping in a common area. Thousands of social-media users have since shared their experiences as persons of color in a “white space.”

Starbucks didn’t press charges against the men, but protests followed, along with the requisite hashtag directive, in this case, #boycottStarbucks. The men, though, settled with the city for a dollar apiece and a promise to invest in a program to assist young entrepreneurs.

Trump Smacking Amazon While Afrikan Liberation Peddling "Neurospeculative AfroFeminist" Cloth

thenextweb |  The Guardian reports Berlin-bound artist and independent researcher Adam Harvey is developing a new technology which aims to overwhelm and confuse computer vision systems by feeding them false information.

The Hyperface Project, as Harvey calls it, revolves around printing deceitful patterns onto attire and textiles with the purpose of rendering your face illegible to surveillance systems.

The method essentially dodges facial recognition by presenting computer vision devices with an overload of patterns closely resembling facial features like eyes and mouths.

As Harvey explains, the Hyperface technology ultimately prevents computers from scanning your face by inundating “an algorithm with what it wants, oversaturating an area with faces to divert the gaze of the computer vision algorithm.”

The patterns, which Harvey developed in collaboration with interaction studio Hyphen-Labs, can then be worn to shield off the areas facial recognition systems seek to interpret.

MIT |  Sue Ding interviewed the creators of NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism, an ambitious and richly imagined project at this year’s Sundance New Frontier.  Artists Carmen Aguilar y Wedge, Ashley Baccus Clark, Nitzan Bartov, and Ece Tankal are part of of Hyphen-Labs, a global team of women of color who are doing pioneering work at the intersection of art, technology, and science. Together they draw on a formidable range of expertise, including engineering, molecular biology, game design, and architecture.

NeuroSpeculative AfroFeminism consists of three components. The first is an installation that transports visitors to a futuristic and stylish beauty salon. Speculative products designed for women of color are displayed around the space. They include sunscreen for dark skin, a scarf whose pattern overwhelms facial recognition software, earrings that can record video and audio in hostile situations, and a reflective visor that lets wearers see out while hiding their faces.

The second part of the project is a VR experience that takes place at a “neurocosmetology lab” in the future. Participants see themselves in the mirror as a young black girl, as the lab owner explains that they are about to receive Octavia Electrodes—cutting edge technology involving both hair extensions and brain-stimulating electrical currents. In the VR narrative, the electrodes then prompt a hallucination that carries viewers through a psychedelic Afrofuturist space landscape.

The final component of the project is Hyphen-Labs’ ongoing research about how VR can affect viewers, potentially reducing bias and fear by immersing participants in positive, engaging portrayals of black women. The team would eventually like to use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) technology to study how  participants respond to the experience.

Trump Reveals Gerald Horne(Cathedral) and Max Boot(NeoCon) Synergy

unz |  Max Boot: Trump ‘making me feel like a foreigner’ in my own country

(CNN) Author and foreign policy analyst Max Boot feels President Donald Trump is making him feel like a “foreigner” in his own country.

“He’s making me feel like an outsider, a Russian, a Jew, an immigrant,” Boot told CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.

“Anything but kind of a normal mainstream American, because of the way that he is dividing us and balkanizing us and seems to be catering to this white nationalist agenda.” …

Boot said it was “especially chilling” to hear people like Steve Bannon and Steve Miller trying to change the character of the country by “saying we’re not a nation of immigrants.” 

And now from Foreign Policy, Mr. Invade-the-World/Invite-the-World himself, Max Boot, announced that Trump’s election has opened his eyes to White Privilege:

2017 Was the Year I Learned About My White Privilege

I used to be a smart-alecky conservative who scoffed at “political correctness.” The Trump era has opened my eyes.

BY MAX BOOT | DECEMBER 27, 2017, 1:55 PM

Max Boot is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. His forthcoming book is “The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam.”

In college — this was in the late 1980s and early 1990s at the University of California, Berkeley — I used to be one of those smart-alecky young conservatives who would scoff at the notion of “white male privilege” and claim that anyone propagating such concepts was guilty of “political correctness.” As a Jewish refugee from the Soviet Union, I felt it was ridiculous to expect me to atone for the sins of slavery and segregation, to say nothing of the household drudgery and workplace discrimination suffered by women. I wasn’t racist or sexist. (Or so I thought.) I hadn’t discriminated against anyone. (Or so I thought.) My ancestors were not slave owners or lynchers; they were more likely victims of the pogroms.

I saw America as a land of opportunity, not a bastion of racism or sexism. I didn’t even think that I was a “white” person — the catchall category that has been extended to include everyone from a Mayflower descendant to a recently arrived illegal immigrant from Ireland….

That last sentence is just bizarre: if you are claiming that “white” is a “catchall category” that has been “extended” to “include everyone” … and then as your examples of apparent polar opposites you come up with a Mayflower WASP and an Irishman … huh? What is going on in Max Boot’s head?

Space Is White

opendemocracy |  Fundamental to this process is the recognition that space is a potential destination for everyone. Contemporary Afro-futurist Denenge Akpem has attempted to spark this discussion through, “The MARS Project – Teaching Afro-futurism as Methodology of Liberation.” Akpem, a performance artist and sculptor who has taught at both the School of the Art Institute Chicago and Columbia College Chicago, invites her students to imagine the first mission to, and settlement of Mars through the lens of Afro-futurism and diversity.

In contrast, Mars One, a private Dutch initiative to settle Mars by 2026, has raised eyebrows for seeming to select its astronauts using a format akin to reality TV. And while National Geographic’s upcoming docu-drama miniseries MARS features an internationally, racially and gender diverse crew in 2033 aboard the Daedalus, it’s noticeable that they are led by an all-American white male mission commander who will “be the first to walk on Mars”.

In addition, if we are to colonize Mars or any other planet or space station for that matter, then genetics and population dynamics call for the largest and broadest sample of who we are to be included among the settlers. As Sun Ra highlights, the worlds of art, music, philosophy, science and literature are created by all of us. In space as on Earth, there is a deep value to embracing and maintaining the plurality of our existence: it celebrates our empathy and love for one another.

As Ra presaged, Space Is The Place for us to take this love—the best of Earth’s legacy—to Mars and beyond.

Ta-Nussy IS the Jay-Z Empty Neoliberal Face of Black Public Intellectualism

Guardian |  Ta-Nehisi Coates’ We Were Eight Years in Power, a book about Barack Obama’s presidency and the tenacity of white supremacy, has captured the attention of many of us. One crucial question is why now in this moment has his apolitical pessimism gained such wide acceptance?

Coates and I come from a great tradition of the black freedom struggle. He represents the neoliberal wing that sounds militant about white supremacy but renders black fightback invisible. This wing reaps the benefits of the neoliberal establishment that rewards silences on issues such as Wall Street greed or Israeli occupation of Palestinian lands and people.

The disagreement between Coates and me is clear: any analysis or vision of our world that omits the centrality of Wall Street power, US military policies, and the complex dynamics of class, gender, and sexuality in black America is too narrow and dangerously misleading. So it is with Ta-Nehisi Coates’ worldview.

Coates rightly highlights the vicious legacy of white supremacy – past and present. He sees it everywhere and ever reminds us of its plundering effects. Unfortunately, he hardly keeps track of our fightback, and never connects this ugly legacy to the predatory capitalist practices, imperial policies (of war, occupation, detention, assassination) or the black elite’s refusal to confront poverty, patriarchy or transphobia.

In short, Coates fetishizes white supremacy. He makes it almighty, magical and unremovable. What concerns me is his narrative of “defiance”. For Coates, defiance is narrowly aesthetic – a personal commitment to writing with no connection to collective action. It generates crocodile tears of neoliberals who have no intention of sharing power or giving up privilege.

When he honestly asks: “How do you defy a power that insists on claiming you?”, the answer should be clear: they claim you because you are silent on what is a threat to their order (especially Wall Street and war). You defy them when you threaten that order.

Old School Afrodemics vs. Chosen Afro-Fruiturist Media Faces

Jelani Cobb brings receipts

Pound MeToo In The HBCU's

NYTimes | The fliers appeared suddenly on a crisp morning in early November. They were scattered among golden leaves on the grounds of Spelman and Morehouse, the side-by-side women’s and men’s colleges that are two of the country’s most celebrated historically black schools.

“Morehouse Protects Rapists,” some of them read. “Spelman Protects Rapists.”

Some of the documents accused prominent athletes and fraternity members by name. Though workers quickly made the fliers disappear, students were already passing photos from cellphone to cellphone. Before long, the names were on Twitter.

And the next morning, students at Morehouse woke up to another unnerving sight: graffiti marring the chapel, a spiritual gathering place dedicated to a revered alumnus, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Scrawled in red spray paint, the message read: “Practice What You Preach Morehouse + End Rape Culture.”

In a letter to the campus on Oct. 29, the provost, Michael Quick, announced he was convening a series of forums and task forces. “There is no place on our campuses, or in our society, for abuse of power,” it said.

And in Atlanta, the issue is gripping two campuses, and exposed a deep fissure between schools closely linked by history and geography.

Neither Spelman nor Morehouse would disclose how many complaints it has received, and in interviews, Spelman students and professors said they did not believe sexual assault was any more common there than elsewhere.

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But most said they believed the colleges had not been taking the issue seriously enough. Now their pent-up frustration has burst into the open during a national moment of reckoning.

“I don’t believe our students would be doing what they’re doing if things like this hadn’t been happening nationally,” said Beverly Guy-Sheftall, a women’s studies professor who was one of more than 70 Spelman professors who signed an open letter supporting students who said they had been assaulted.

In a three-minute speech on Nov. 9, the day the graffiti was found on the King chapel, Harold Martin Jr., the interim president of Morehouse, said there was “clearly a belief that there is a population that does not feel heard.”

Feminism Cathedral is Ressentiment

medium |  I’ve received a sudden deluge of comments from men informing me that I mustn’t write essays about rape culture anymore, so here’s another essay about rape culture.

One of the most common recurring themes I’ve seen in the criticisms of my last couple of articles on this subject is the claim that I only believe rape culture is a thing because I’ve had a uniquely bad set of experiences with men, which distorts my ability to provide a clear analysis of the subject. But that’s just the thing — my experiences aren’t unique. Virtually all women have had extensive bad experiences with rape, sexual harassment and sexual abuse.

All in all I’ve actually had exceptionally good experiences with men; I have an amazing father, an amazing husband, and an amazing son. If I thought men were just evil rape monsters I wouldn’t write about the various ways rape culture is becoming conscious and how we can explore this as a society. We’ve had a long, chaotic march into the present moment as a species, and much of that march has included the commodification of women as essentially the property of a male partner who was entitled to sex whenever he wanted it. This has left many vestigial relics in our culture that have yet to move into consciousness, but we’re getting there. Here are four things that I would like to use my little platform here to say to every woman about this journey:

This Election Marked the End of America's Racial Detente

thefederalist |  There is a misconception that political correctness was responsible for the breakdown of the racial détente. This is incorrect. Political correctness, as loose a term as it is, was the means by which we continually renegotiated the terms of the deal. After all, the primary rules for whites had exactly to do with what was acceptable to say.

Privilege theory and the concept of systemic racism dealt the death blow to the détente. In embracing these theories, minorities and progressives broke their essential rule, which was to not run around calling everyone a racist. As these theories took hold, every white person became a racist who must confess that racism and actively make amends. Yet if the white woman who teaches gender studies at Barnard with the Ben Shahn drawings in her office is a racist, what chance do the rest of have?

Within the past few years, as privilege theory took hold, many whites began to think that no matter what they did they would be called racist, because, in fact, that was happening. Previously there were rules. They shifted at times, but if adhered to they largely protected one from the charge of racism. It’s like the Morrissey lyric: “is evil just something you are, or something you do.” Under the détente, racism was something you did; under privilege theory it is something you are.

That shift, from carefully directed accusations of racism for direct actions to more general charges of unconscious racism, took away the carrot for whites. Worse, it led to a defensiveness and feeling of victimization that make today’s whites in many ways much more tribal than they were 30 years ago. White people are constantly told to examine their whiteness, not to think of themselves as racially neutral. That they did, but the result was not introspection that led to reconciliation, it was a decision that white people have just as much right to think of themselves as a special interest group as anyone else.

Blame and Destroy Whitey 

The unfortunate place where we now find ourselves is one in which blatant attacks on white people, often from white people, are driving them further into a tribal cocoon. Samantha Bee’s awful and irresponsible berating of white women as the evil force behind Trump’s victory, while condescendingly describing magical people of color as the only ones who can save us, is a clear example of where white defensiveness and victimization are coming from.

Furthermore, the ever-present drumbeat from the Left that every conservative victory is the death throes of bad, old white people who are about to be swept away by waves of brown immigration is making many whites dig in. On a certain level, how can you blame them? They are explicitly being told that their values and way of life are under the sword. How do we expect them to react?

The détente was far from perfect. It often allowed quieter racism to lurk unchallenged. In some ways, it was a Band-Aid on a bullet wound. But Band-Aids have a role to play in treating bullet wounds—the body heals itself better when the wound is clean and free from infection. This is true of discourse’s ability to heal our body politic, as well. Under the détente, there was still racism, but Steve Bannon, whose publication Breitbart has traded in vile explicit racism, could never have been considered for White House chief of staff.

Trumpism Has Dealt a Mortal Blow to Orthodox Economics and ‘Social Science’

ineteconomics |  Grappling with the shock of Donald Trump’s election victory, most analysts focus on his appeal to those in the United States who feel left behind, wish to retrieve a lost social order, and sought to rebuke establishment politicians who do not serve their interests. In this respect, the recent American revolt echoes the shock of the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, but it is of far greater significance because it promises to reshape the entire global order, and the complaisant forms of thought that accompanied it.

Ideas played an important role in creating the conditions that produced Brexit and Trump. The ‘social sciences’ — especially economics — legitimated a set of ideas about the economy that were aggressively peddled and became the conventional wisdom in the policies of mainstream political parties, to the extent that the central theme of the age came to be that there was no alternative. The victory of these ideas in politics  in turn strengthened the iron-handed enforcers of the same ideas in academic orthodoxy.

It is never clear whether ideas or interests are the prime mover in shaping historical events, but only ideas and interests together can sustain a ruling consensus for a lengthy interval, such as the historic period of financialization and globalization running over the last 35 years. The role of economics in furnishing the now-rebuked narratives that have reigned for decades in mainstream political parties can be seen in three areas.

Directness is a Working Class Norm

HBR |  Michèle Lamont, in The Dignity of Working Men, also found resentment of professionals — but not of the rich. “[I] can’t knock anyone for succeeding,” a laborer told her. “There’s a lot of people out there who are wealthy and I’m sure they worked darned hard for every cent they have,” chimed in a receiving clerk. Why the difference? For one thing, most blue-collar workers have little direct contact with the rich outside of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. But professionals order them around every day. The dream is not to become upper-middle-class, with its different food, family, and friendship patterns; the dream is to live in your own class milieu, where you feel comfortable — just with more money. “The main thing is to be independent and give your own orders and not have to take them from anybody else,” a machine operator told Lamont. Owning one’s own business — that’s the goal. That’s another part of Trump’s appeal.

Hillary Clinton, by contrast, epitomizes the dorky arrogance and smugness of the professional elite. The dorkiness: the pantsuits. The arrogance: the email server. The smugness: the basket of deplorables. Worse, her mere presence rubs it in that even women from her class can treat working-class men with disrespect. Look at how she condescends to Trump as unfit to hold the office of the presidency and dismisses his supporters as racist, sexist, homophobic, or xenophobic.

Trump’s blunt talk taps into another blue-collar value: straight talk. “Directness is a working-class norm,” notes Lubrano. As one blue-collar guy told him, “If you have a problem with me, come talk to me. If you have a way you want something done, come talk to me. I don’t like people who play these two-faced games.” Straight talk is seen as requiring manly courage, not being “a total wuss and a wimp,” an electronics technician told Lamont. Of course Trump appeals. Clinton’s clunky admission that she talks one way in public and another in private? Further proof she’s a two-faced phony.

Afrodemic Apocalypse: MHP served her purpose but has now become a trivially expendable liability...,

medium |  As you know by now, my name appears on the weekend schedule for MSNBC programming from South Carolina this Saturday and Sunday. I appreciate that many of you responded to this development with relief and enthusiasm. To know that you have missed working with me even a fraction of how much I’ve missed working with all of you is deeply moving. However, as of this morning, I do not have any intention of hosting this weekend. Because this is a decision that affects all of you, I wanted to take a moment to explain my reasoning.

Some unknown decision-maker, presumably Andy Lack or Phil Griffin, has added my name to this spreadsheet, but nothing has changed in the posture of the MSNBC leadership team toward me or toward our show. Putting me on air seems to be a decision being made solely to save face because there is a growing chorus of questions from our viewers about my notable absence from MSNBC coverage. Social media has noted the dramatic change in editorial tone and racial composition of MSNBC’s on-air coverage. In addition, Dylan Byers of CNN has made repeated inquiries with MSNBC’s leadership and with me about the show and what appears to be its cancellation. I have not responded to reporters or social media inquiries. However, I am not willing to appear on air in order to quell concerns about the disappearance of our show and our voice.

Here is the reality: our show was taken — without comment or discussion or notice — in the midst of an election season. After four years of building an audience, developing a brand, and developing trust with our viewers, we were effectively and utterly silenced. Now, MSNBC would like me to appear for four inconsequential hours to read news that they deem relevant without returning to our team any of the editorial control and authority that makes MHP Show distinctive.

The purpose of this decision seems to be to provide cover for MSNBC, not to provide voice for MHP Show. I will not be used as a tool for their purposes. I am not a token, mammy, or little brown bobble head. I am not owned by Lack, Griffin, or MSNBC. I love our show. I want it back. I have wept more tears than I can count and I find this deeply painful, but I don’t want back on air at any cost. I am only willing to return when that return happens under certain terms.