White Man Triumphant

I sit here, a white man, in white suburbia, ensconced in the bosom of white Middle Class prosperity, and I owe it all to my hard work and perseverance...

And white supremacy.

As someone pointed out to me on Twitter, what I have called for years "White privilege" is, in fact, simply a watered-down version of the truth of the matter: the domination of the White portion of American society is due to White supremacy, the idea that somehow, the melanin level of one's skin grants powers to those that others are not due, simply by virtue of having it or not. White supremacy is the idea that a person of any other color, even mixed with Whiteness, is automatically inferior. White supremacy is the idea that power must be concentrated in the hands of White people and must never be willingly given to anyone else.

White supremacy even has its own gradations, for it is clear that a White man is considered lord-and-master over anything and everything and everyone, even a White woman. Look to what happened this week in Texas, and you see it in action -- no woman of any color would be given the right to her own bodily autonomy with the say-so of the White men in power.

Of course, you will be alarmist, and sputter on about groups such as the Klu Klux Klan, and if White, will swear upon a convenient stack of Bibles that you are not like them. The point is, you don't have to be. White supremacy is not simply burning crosses on lawns and lynching Black men for whistling at White women.

White supremacy is the ultimate wink-and-a-nod, the unseen get-out-of-jail-free card, the worst kept secret handshake in history. You walk in the door and you get the loan, you get the slot at your favorite college, you get the job at a higher rate of pay, because the color of your skin walks into the room first, laying the groundwork for everything to come. It's not always so transparent, not always so overt, nor is it as subtle as some would love to claim. Electing a Black President did not magically cause it to evaporate. No number of successful Black actors, Black athletes, or Black politicians have served to eradicate it. At the end of the day, it is as pernicious as it was when irons, chains, and the lash held sway, but has now been covered over with a veneer of self-congratulation by many a White person who is sure that the whole sordid mess was cleaned up after the 60's.

We should note, that nobility in the name of righting the wrongs of race is not cut-and-dried, ever. With the 150th anniversary of the pivotal Civil War action at Gettysburg, the battle that spelled the turning of the tide against The Confederacy, we also have the anniversary of the draft riots in New York City, where many an immigrant community, angered at being conscripted to fight in the war, took to lynching Blacks and burning Black businesses and schools to show their displeasure, forcing weary Gettysburg soldiers to march to the city to quell the uprising.

The Civil War did not end racial inequities or injustice, anymore than the 60's Civil Rights movement that came after it would. Every momentous event in the history of White and Black relations merely serves to paper over the truth: that we cling to stereotypes, that we maintain our prejudices, that racial tension does not simply go away because Blacks and Whites go to the same universities and riots do not break out. Even now, a person such as myself, who prides himself on equanimity and a lack of racial prejudice in his heritage, is still betrayed occasionally by thoughts from dark recesses that paint those of other racial types in a bad fashion. To maintain personal racial tolerance is not the simple flipping of a switch in my conscious mind, but a constant struggle to overcome baser instincts buried in my subconscious by the stimuli I have been exposed to over time. Even where I strive to give equality to all people at all times, there is an accumulated detritus festering below the surface of my mind, roiling in its darker recesses to plague me, unbidden.

In the end, if I am honest with myself, I can claim to have built the successes I have made over the decades solely by dint of my hard work and pluck, but must acknowledge that my Whiteness was carried with me and certainly influenced some to give me opportunities or deference out of all proportion to my due. If that is so, then it is equally true that many around me, who worked as hard, if not harder, were barred from reaping the benefits of the fruits of that labor, by being unable to carry the calling card of Whiteness with them.

Now, after all this, we have the incomprehensible result of a trial in which an armed White man killed an unarmed Black boy in cold blood and will not be held accountable, save by his God. While we can claim that the jury made the only verdict it could given the evidence presented, justice is not about the cold, hard facts of law, but about the warm, soft edges of human nature and behavior. A law may say that if you fear for your life, you might kill another in self-defense, but does it seem reasonable that this applies to a man who chose to pursue the black Boy, because he was a black Boy? A man with no authority, save that which he forged for himself through his machinations, who was given the instruction to allow people with authority (the police) to handle the situation? A man, who had a concealed weapon, that turned his cowardice into "courage?"

No, it is not mere privilege that explains this, for privilege is bestowed by those with the power. Supremacy is enforced, by the use of all the tools available to press others down, to tear power from their hands, to marginalize and demonize them, denigrating them and making them somehow less than those who hold supremacy. It is always the case that conflict starts when one group turns another group into something other than their group is; in this instance, the White person maintains the Black person is lower, inferior, less intelligent, less educated, and then enforces those views with the tools at hand, by stripping away educational opportunities, forcing them into poverty, abandoning them to crime, and using that as "evidence" that the supremacy is correct.

The George Zimmerman verdict is only the most visible sign that White supremacy is alive and well in our nation, and still holds sway over a society that continues to trill its belief in "all men are created equal." That equality is, sadly, merely a good idea; it has gained no true traction in the nation that has enshrined it in a "sacred" document of its creation. The council of White, landowning men that wrote and signed off on those words perhaps believed their intention was enough, but by not broadening it to "all people" being equal, and by enshrining Black slavery directly in the Constitution, they laced a noble idea of self-governance with a perpetuation of their White supremacy. Over two hundred years later, and despite our best efforts, we have not honestly expunged the ghosts of it from every corner of our land.

So Mr. Zimmerman walks free, which is more than can be said for his victim, Trayvon Martin, and we are outraged, but then, we built this system, with our inattention to the workings of our government and our nation. That inattention allowed the perpetuation of White supremacy in the guise of governance, and allowed the purveyors of such supremacy to ensconce themselves in positions of power by dissuading everyone else from becoming engaged. But no one should turn us from our right and proper duty: the maintenance, and occasional readjustment, of our Local, State, and Federal governments. This moment is the clarion call that should stir the beating heart of any American to action, to right the wrong this verdict represents by ensuring it never happens again. The restoration of true and consistent order in our nation is our responsibility, and we can no longer shirk it.

It is time to fold the tent of racial supremacy. The White portion of America, slowly merging into the national milieu, can no longer count itself as superior, the only just arbiter of what is proper. We were never anointed masters of the world -- we stole that from every other race we could, and now our transgressions fold in upon us. As much as I, a White man, want to grasp the reins of power, to restore order, to make amends, I know I cannot. I must cede control and convince others of my race to do likewise, to attempt to create balance in a nation that has never known it. It is not enough to bring up other races, genders, creeds, or sexual orientations; I must tear down that apparatus that has kept those groups in the shadows, without hesitation or fear. It is time my country lived up to the fair and just principles long ago espoused, without qualification, and without malice. Let there be the new birth of freedom President Lincoln called for, but this time let it be real, and let it ring throughout the centuries from this day forward.

There's Always A Choice

To Republicans: Please, feel free to ban abortion. I'll wait...

Done?

Good.

What have you accomplished? Nothing. Well, not nothing, but perhaps something you couldn't conceive of, as if you were in full belief that the stroke of a pen simply causes people to behave differently. If that were the case, you're probably actually follow the precepts of The Bible...

But I digress.

So you slam the door on "baby killing," padlock Planned Parenthood, pat yourselves on the back, and call it a day, thinking you have rid the world of one more "scourge." You have put women in their place, depriving them of something you are sure they didn't need anyway.

And somewhere, in a kitchen, or a family room, or a trailer, or a shack, or a church, or a car or a clinic, there sits a woman (or to be far to the transgendered, any person with a womb), clutching the awful news that they are pregnant, at a time, in a place, in a situation, where such a thing is unwanted, or unwarranted, or complicating. It wasn't meant to happen, it wasn't supposed to happen, it shouldn't have happened... and yet there it is, the report, the pregnancy test, saying that it is, in fact, so.

Maybe there is mere fretting, but more likely there might be sobbing, anger, frustration, fear, uncertainty, fright, panic, depression... maybe all of these things, in various levels and proportions. Suddenly, a world which seemed to be operating as smoothly as it does any day, lurches and shakes and shudders, and someone is left to pick up the pieces. They need an out, not because they enjoy the thought of it, but because in this time and place is not the right time and place.

But you've left them no choice... have you?

That's what you think.

You'd like to believe wholeheartedly that your damnation of abortion has expunged the idea and practice from the face of the Earth. You want to believe that anyone seeking one will now simply shrug their shoulders, give up, and bring the fetus to term, to fill the world with another helpless, mewling soul. Anyway, it's not your business at that point...

Don't kid yourself.

Desperation leads to drastic action.

Our forlorn mother-to-be will be wracked with spasms of horror, but will more than likely be pushed to take a course that you refuse to acknowledge: She will do it herself.

Maybe with help, maybe alone, maybe with chemicals, maybe with tools, maybe in a way unfathomable, but she will not be denied the surcease of the pain this pregnancy is causing, will cause, no matter how much anyone abhors it. She will follow through... and perhaps will not live to see the morrow.

You have done what you thought was best for all involved, only to allow the rose-colored shortsightedness you are cloaked in to hide the truth: a woman always has a choice. Short of manacling the pregnant to beds, there is no way to banish abortion. No will, no law, no admonishment will make it stop, merely place it beyond your prying eyes, in back alleys, and motel rooms, and silent apartments.

All because you tried to play God.

Sleep well. When you arise the clinics will be silent... and so will be the screams of women dying in tortured anguish.

Guns, Gams, and Gumshoes At The Bijou

I missed the era of nickel matinees at the movie theater, staring up at the flickering black-and-white images of Hollywood's brightest, wrapped up in catching the pratfalls and passion. I was, however, able to indulge in the nostalgia of the era thanks to PBS and the show Matinee At The Bijou. I gained an appreciation for classic serials, the artistry of Keaton and Chaplin, the gruffness of Bogart, the sensuousness of Bacall, the power Crawford, and the majesty of Grant. I also got sucked into the shadowy world of film noir, a place where shadowy figures tried to manipulate hard-nosed men and desperate women, where vices could be your downfall, where death erupted suddenly and without warning. The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Dial M for Murder, DOA, The Naked City, The Asphalt Jungle... movies that would grab you, reel you in, and keep you on the edge of their seat with their gritty, gutty stories.

Growing up, what boy didn't want to be Humphrey Bogart, chasing bad guys through back alleys or trading innuendo and smoldering glances with Lauren Bacall?

It is an art form that has faded from the American consciousness in this day-and-age of CGI-drawn visuals, explosions, incessant hammering of automatic weapons, and thinly-veiled bodies heaving against each other in bed. We want everything heaved at us in a frenetic ballet of violence or spoon-fed to us as a sappy, syrupy confection. We are rarely pulled unwillingly into a story, left wondering if the people we see are actually who we think they are. Too much of modern movie making is trying to hide the obvious in a complicated goop of misdirection in the vain hope of surprising people.

Which brings me to a thing which crossed before my eyes a little over two weeks ago, a project by the talented Kirsten Vangsness (also known as Penelope Garcia on Criminal Minds) and her cohorts at Opiate of the Masses. It is a movie homage to the glory days of film, and film noir in particular, called "Kill Me, Deadly." It is a laugh-out-loud comedy that stars Ms. Vangsness as the femme fatale of our drama, Mona Livingston, Dean Lemont as the clueless gumshoe with the hots for her, Charlie Nickels, Joe Mantegna as Bugsy Siegel, noted gangster, and the incomparable Lesley-Anne Down as Lady Clairmont, the shadowy lady in the background.

It's not often you will find me shilling for something, but my heart has been sold to this piece of work that touches on an era that was one of the watershed moments in movie making. But rather than some dour replication of the genre, here are people who love art, film, film-making, and have put a comedic spin on it that will at once have you enthralled and in stitches. It doesn't take much to support a fine project such as this, but ever simoleon, every sawbuck, every bit of dough takes it that much closer to completion. Watch the trailer, read the back story, and help Opiate of the Masses finish bringing this story to life. Get you piece of the action now...

One Nation, Under Siege

It became clear the moment Barack Obama was declared the winner of the 2008 Presidential election, that a shift was occurring in American society, a momentous shift, the momentum for which had built over the decades since the end of the 1960's. In the highest bastion of white male dominance, a black man would reign, finally.

To many, it signaled the end of the world.

A cherished view of a nation dominated by the last vestiges of the exclusively white, male Founding Fathers was torn asunder, as if the Starts and Stripes were ripped from a flagpole, dashed to the ground, and trampled. The harsh, unendurable reality of hundreds years of secession, repression, segregation, criminalization, denigration, and enslavement of a people burst forth, as the damming of their drive for freedom was damned by the weakness of a white race unwilling or unable to accept that their view of the black race was built of tissues of self-approbation, self-delusion, and ignorance, not one single stone of truth.

As this wave of change flooded the lands once fertile with overt racism, the spores of that fetid crop were given rise to flourish once more in the light, nourished by the delusional hatred thus uncovered. So it began that the tattered remnants of those forces antithetical to the nation knit themselves into groups that hoisted banners long dormant, taking them to be symbols of the "true" nation, and voicing opposition to anything that spoke to the unity of the disparate elements that, conjoined, make up the United States. Suddenly, it was no longer all of us created equal, but some of us more equal -- and thus more deserving -- of freedoms than others.

These misguided miscreants, buoyed by their wretched enthusiasm, exhorted and supported by The Monied Powers, took to the airwaves and the ballot boxes and battered their way into Federal government, and as the mouse that nests in the gears of the grandfather clock, proceeded to gum up the works. A strong government that could -- and was enjoined to -- support the American people and defend her way of life, began to disassemble the core values that made her great. They put their heads down and rampaged through a system that, while imperfect, had managed to keep the nation together through feast, famine, war, pestilence, and internal strife. A well-oiled mechanism might have absorbed the blow; the government stitched together over two hundred years was not so tough.

It was a simple proposition: the newcomers and their mentors already extant established one goal: to deny the President of the United States any kind of legislative boon, no matter how much it was necessary to the operation of the country. Caught in the midst of a crisis of their manufacture in decades past, these hooligans in the castle proceeded to drag their feet, to spout useless puffery, to point fingers and assign blame, and brought the system of Federal governance to a crawl, barely able to keep it functioning from month to month.

And there was no reason for it.

For in this case, we take "reason" to mean that there was some flaw in character, some dark, deceitful streak, some malevolent undertone, that they could see and we could not.

President Barack Obama presented no such things.

Instead, he was earnest in his attempts to urge the nation along, to light a fire under a sputtering economy, to rein in the excesses of our forays into nation-building at the end of a sword. He spoke of peace, but was unafraid of war. He could wax eloquent about the true meaning of the founding of our nation and at the same time point out its most egregious flaws. Most of all, he was able to draw ire from both sides of the aisle, the surest sign that he was on the right track to handling a fractious and floundering country.

No, this foul, festering obstructionism was not the product of any realized malevolence in the heart of our President. It was -- and is -- the odious stench of racism, swathed in anti-government sentiment, cloaked in jingoism, and borne upon a howling wind of self-importance by Americans who are certain they owe nothing to anyone, even as they are sure they are owed everything by everyone else. It is a match set to the tinder of a nation desiccated by close to four hundred years of treating every person on the North American continent who was not of the "good fortune" to be born of the white race as inferior.

Is every opponent of the President's agenda a racist? Certainly not. If not, however, they have not been in a hurry to denounce their brethren who are. They have not been quick to denounce those who wish violence and death upon him and those who work for them. They have not been quick to derail the fanatical desire of some in their number to drag his name through the mud. They are certainly not quick to acknowledge his lack of malevolent intent. No, they are content to sit on the sidelines, eyes closed, ears plugged, pretending they are above it.

It is clear that there is one narrative in our nation now, that overrides anything reasonable, one that is given the widest possible latitude, one that is shouted from rooftops and television sets: President Obama is destroying America. If that were the case, it would already lie in ruins at our feet, for it was tattered badly by the previous administration's lackadaisical approach to governance and appeasement of its party base. All evidence points to a nation that has resisted a tide of disappointment, disaster, and chicanery, through brute strength and main stubbornness and a willingness of the average American to lend a hand to those in need. Despite every attempt by a petulant and fickle Republican Party to douse the flame of unity, we soldier on, as we always have. If anything, we are stronger for the fight to restore order.

Now, as the grey skies part, it is time to turn from the business of survival to that of restoration. The bombastic lot that plunged us into the whirling chaos of budgetary shortfalls coupled with regulatory dismemberment lain on top of the admixture of nationalist fervor and the tyranny of the minority must be handed their walking papers. The United States of America is not ready to fold, not prepared to simply walk away from the table. We have come too far, survived too much, to allow a bunch of rabble-rousers to continue excoriating a government that has held this nation together for over two hundred thirty years. If they do not like the Federal government, they need not be part of it, but as long as they claim the individual rights and freedoms that that government protects and provides, they will not be allowed to destroy it.

So it is up to the rest of us to put a halt to this madness, through word, and deed, and ballot. Let us restore the faith our Founding Fathers had in us, when they built a nation Of The People, By The People, and For The People, by showing that We, The People shall not give in to the tyranny that some among us would claim as patriotism. Our nation must remain indivisible, with liberty and justice for ALL.

Founded By Geniuses?

This week I was exposed to the limited thinking of some, more-so than at any time I can remember. It came in the form of a series of statements trying to link current circumstances to the nation the Founding Fathers lay down over two hundred years ago. Each circumstance ended with the phrase: "You may live in a nation founded by geniuses but run by idiots."

Rather than reproduce any of them, and thereby lend them credence, let me focus solely on that last portion of each phrase, for it points out a complete and abject failure on the part of the educational systems of our nation that such diatribes could be thought of as some sort of truth. For on neither side of the ledger is the assertion strictly true: most of the Founding Fathers were not geniuses, nor are many of our legislators idiots. That is only a surface appearance that has been spun in to some sort of earthy, down-home "logic" that holds no basis in fact.

It comes from a place of worship and veneration for the founding of the United States of America, based on fractured, incomplete, and often misinterpreted information about the Founders and the state of the Colonies at the time of the Revolutionary War. Some in our nation conflate the Constitution of the United States with the Declaration of Independence, and draw the conclusion that somehow those men who founded our nation -- and yes, they were all men -- were paragons of virtue and thought, which could not be further from the truth. Tarring current legislators with the epithet "idiot" only further seeks to create an undue comparison between past and present, as if they could be compared on some kind of equal footing.

If we take a cold, clear, critical look at the Founding Fathers, we see only two who could roundly be described as "geniuses," and only one of them could be said to be an actual genius: Benjamin Franklin and George Washington. Franklin is certainly a bona fide genius in terms we might relate to Newton, Einstein, or the like; he was a scientist, scholar, inventor, and visionary, and foresaw what it would take for the American Revolution to be successful, trying his utmost to pull the strings quietly but firmly to push everyone in the correct direction. Washington was a genius in a more limited but still highly important role, as leader of troops and a nation. He was confident that Colonial troops, properly trained and equipped, could be a match for the British, and was more than willing to employ unique and unorthodox tactics to gain advantage over his foes. Once made President of the nation he helped forge, he saw how the future would need the nation and its leaders to follow a certain path, to bear good comportment, but be willing to use the power of the nation to quell the more radical elements still extant within it.

As for the rest of the Founding Fathers, many were virtuous in their own ways, men of The Enlightenment, willing to think a few steps outside their comfortable box, but not the geniuses many would now portray them as. Thomas Jefferson wrote stirring prose and helped launch a war of independence, but he thought only men were created equal, not people, and at that, black people were not even considered. He was a slave-owner who took full advantage of his property, even as he expounded on the necessity of his nation to be free. John Adams was a very smart, very clever man, and excellent jurist, but not a leader, not able see much beyond his own inadequate vision. It could be said his wife Abigail often saw what he could not, and perhaps it was she who made him a better man than he could have been alone. Alexander Hamilton was wedded to economics more than people, and while we might applaud for his efforts in trying to establish a collective and regulated financial structure, we have to wonder at how he went about it.

The fact is, they were no better than we are now, these captains of the foundation of our nation. In only one aspect of their forethought can we see true genius: the idea that the people of the United States must be able to govern themselves. But even in that, they did not quite do the most complete job of laying groundwork, riddling the Constitution with firm assurances and vagaries of comprehension we are still teasing out today. Perhaps this was a way to make future generations think, but it's more likely that it was simply the end product of the squabbling and bickering of a group of men who had anointed themselves the smartest people in the room. Whatever the case, the crafted an adequate framework, but left so much undone or in a muddle, that the nation is still trying to tease it our centuries later.

If they were said to be wise in letting We, The People, choose who will govern us from among our peers, it may be said that we have failed the Founding Fathers in that area, by allowing a class of politicians to enmesh themselves in the inner workings of government at all levels. Governance is gone, replaced by style and popularity and money. Rather than sweeping the halls of Congress clean occasionally and allowing for new blood and new life to pervade them, we simply allow the same weak, forlorn, outmoded thinking to persist. If those in positions of governance can be said to be idiots, we are the idiots for putting them there and leaving them there. The great body that is America suffers, for not being allowed to breathe.

Naturally, the "idiocy" we see is not always thus, for much that many would malign is simply the product of ancient ways fighting modern times. In over two hundred years, our nation and world have changed, are no longer the familiar grounds that Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Franklin, and the like strolled in their day. As these things change, so must we, and we must realize that new ways of think are not of necessity bad ways of thinking, even where they challenge what has held true for centuries. Enslavement of blacks, the denigration and patronization of women, religious and sexual intolerance... these might have been the order of the day one thousand years ago, even two hundred years ago, but they are not now. Change is inevitable, change is constant, and even the Founding Fathers, as men of The Enlightenment  knew this, hence allowing the Constitution to be re-written and providing for a central government that could redress issues unknown to them and alter law to match the times.

The nation we have now is the nation we have wrought from more than two centuries of anguish, triumph, pain, and grief. Founded in imperfection, it was the wish of those founders that we take their work and improve upon it. If we are unhappy with the current results, perhaps that is more an issue with our lack of forethought and courage, than it is with the competence of our current legislators compared with the "genius" of our founders.