Kunstler: Lit and Sputtering

Kunstler himself is lit and sputtering today.

Kunstler: Lit and Sputtering.

You can see where the trajectory of events is leading. The country will be distracted by racial strife this summer while the global banking system implodes, disabling trade relations and the super-long supply chains we depend on for all common goods from oil to fresh food. Unless the remnants of the Republican Party act responsibly and find a way to replace Trump with a capable candidate, the nation will get what it deserves: a clown in the white house at the climax of the Fourth Turning.

The racial events of recent days resonate in a fog of cognitive dissonance. What really happened in those two incidents involving Philando Castile in Falcon Heights, Minnesota, and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge Louisiana? Too many people pretend to know exactly why these two men were shot by cops. The video recordings of the incidents are ambiguous. In the Castile case, the recording doesn’t start until just after the deed is done.

Given the universal hyper-awareness of the current mood around the country, I doubt that policemen would throw away their livelihoods for a few thrilling seconds of malice. They know exactly what happens after the gun comes out: suspension, investigation, end-of-career, possibly civil prosecution, lawyers and more lawyers, a special hell of lawyers, and no way to make a living in the meantime. In a word: ruin.

These two incidents were followed by the shootings in Dallas by one Micah Johnson of twelve cops, five of whom died. That matter was not so ambiguous. The authorities quickly determined what happened and why. It is likely to lead to more assassinations and bushwhackings of police because a peculiar social mechanism gives people permission to re-enact atrocities once certain lines are crossed. We saw that in the political assassinations that commenced in the 1960s. The Jihadi beheadings and other monstrosities work similarly.

The possibilities for mayhem around the upcoming party conventions (Philadelphia and Cleveland) now look much darker than just a few weeks ago. Hillary took advantage of last week’s racial strife to deflect the blows she took from FBI Director James Comey in his public remarks about Hillary’s email problem. She went into full pander mode, blaming “white privilege” for the recent enormities involving guns and police. Of course, that will only fuel the “narrative” that whites are wholly responsible for black dysfunction, a false story that will lead to more conflict.

The legal spectacle surrounding Hillary and the FBI left many thoughtful Americans scratching their heads. The most superficial angle was how FBI Director Comey let Hillary off the hook because her “extremely careless” actions involving the email server did not include any “intent” to break the laws. The trouble is, the federal statutes pertaining to the case do not require any evidence of intent; the actions alone are enough to warrant a criminal referral. Mr. Comey skated over this matter. One cute theory circulating is that he didn’t dare to alter history by setting in motion events that would elevate Trump to power. Who knows…?

Much more remains to be seen in the Hillary email matter, because the real issue is not whether she maintained a private email server against regulations but whether she used that email server to stuff the bank account of the Clinton Foundation with money grifted while serving as Secretary of State. You can be sure we have not heard the end of that issue, and beyond that are the questions surrounding her gigantic speaking fees from Too-Big-Too-Fail banks, the texts of which she has resolutely refused to publically disclose.

This latter issue will become increasingly of interest to voters this summer and fall as trouble in the European banks provokes a contagion of banking failures that will thunder around the planet and begin to cause very serious practical problems for daily life in all the so-called advanced economies. Nobody in and around power in America these days is equipped to manage this epochal calamity, especially while we stumble and blunder our way into race war.

Kunstler at Boston College

Kunstler recently spoke at Boston College. It was a standard talk about the Long Emergency. Then he went out to dinner "with four faculty members and one friend-of-faculty. Three of them were English profs. One was an urban planner and one was an ecology prof. All of the English profs were specialists in race, gender, and privilege. Imagine that. You’d think that the college was a little overloaded there, but it speaks for the current academic obsessive-compulsive neurosis with these matters. Anyway, on the way to restaurant I was chatting in the car with one of the English profs about a particular angle on race, since this was his focus and he tended to view things through that lens. The discussion continued at the dinner table...".

Kunstler: Good Little Maoists.

I think he's digging himself a big hole here.


"Anyway, it was not a coincidence that in the mid 1960s a new wave of black separatist avatars arose around the time of the civil rights legislative victories. Malcolm X, Stokely Charmichael [sic], the Black Panthers, to name a few. That was the moment when much of the black population slid into what has become essentially an oppositional culture, determined to remain separate. Language is part of that picture."--Kunstler

The Black Panthers:

"The writings of the Black Panthers are also in impeccable standard English, but in their speeches there are occasional occurrences of Black English for stylistic effect, to mark group solidarity. ..."

Sociolinguistic Perspectives on Bilingual Education, edited by Christina Bratt Paulston.

(The book looks interesting.)

Stokely Carmichael.

"Described by some as a "black ogre of choice"[23] and by others as "cool and very hip,"[24] Stokely Carmichael was a man of varied rhetorical talents. From an early age, his charismatic style made him a favorite among his fellow Civil Rights activists and a national leader in the Civil Rights Movement. When he first talked about Black Power in Mississippi in 1966, he did so with the fiery passion of a Southern demagogue--a type of speaker he loved to hate. With just a few words, he was able to rally the crowd that came out to see him in Greenwood, Mississippi into a chorus of voices shouting, "Black Power! Black Power! Black Power!" His ability to tailor his speeches to different audiences was one of his greatest talents, as Carmichael himself boasted in his autobiography:

I had a standard-English speech reserved for the merely affluent and curious. Many times these people would say or write that they had expected an "antiwhite diatribe" or a "raving militant rap." Only to be so pleasantly surprised to get a reasoned argument that--even if they didn't agree with it--was "thought provoking." . . . Then too I had a harder, more analytic, and ideological argument for more serious political and intellectual forums. . . . Then there was a down-home, nitty-gritty idiom in a style I mostly borrowed from the Harlem street corner nationalists and the Southern black preachers. This I saved for the brothers and sisters on the block. But the political message stayed the same, whatever the audience, language, or occasion. Only the style changed.[25]

"While Carmichael himself claimed never to use obscenities or vulgarities, rhetorical critic Pat Jefferson notes that his speeches were often laden with risqué sexual innuendos and four-letter words.[26] Whatever the case, Carmichael was always careful to adapt his language to his audience. A speech at Boston's Episcopal Theological School was fashioned very differently from one before a group of young, black street kids or Civil Rights activists."


See also Spoken Soul: The Story of Black English, esp. pp. 224-228.

Kunstler: Kicked to the Curb.

Kunstler: Kicked to the Curb.

On Edit-a-Thons: A Post in Progress

http://kreyolicious.com/afrocrowd/17531/

The Riots Next Door

The Riots Next Door at Queen Mediocretia's Mocklog.

Check it out.

Kunstler: Mr. Bad Example

Kunstler takes on the Michael Brown shooting and the subsequent protests in Ferguson, Missouri. I don't agree with his view.

Kunstler: Mr. Bad Example

White-on-Black Violence

(a post in progress)

I'm keeping track of the aftermath of the George Zimmerman trial* but wanted to list some lesser-known cases of white-on-black gun violence and their relation to stand-your-ground laws.

http://www.alternet.org/culture/trial-begins-old-white-man-who-senselessly-shot-and-killed-black-middle-schooler

Michael Dunn shot and killed a black teenager at a gas station.

*2 November update: George Zimmerman had left a bullet-riddled target for his wife.

On the Racial Wealth Gap, Especially Between Blacks and Whites

I'll post more as I find links.

Kunstler's Essay on

"Class, Race, Hierarchy, and Social Relations in The Long Emergency" Part two is behind a paywall.

I don't agree with Kunstler's stand on gender relations. He basically says that without cheap, abundant oil to power things, housework will once again become toilsome, and that women will do most of it. Unsurprisingly, many women wrote to him and took issue with that prediction.

Despite that, it's still worth reading. And I might have more later.

Notes from a Telecast of the 2013 Harlem Book Fair on C-Span

Below are notes I took during yesterday's live broadcast of the 2013 Harlem Book Fair on C-Span. Harriet Washington was interviewed after her panel discussion and that is when I started watching.
==============

Harriet Washington
--Deadly Monopolies
--Medical Apartheid (2007 Natl. Book Critics Circle Awd.)
--------------
E.R. Shipp
Morgan State U.
jrnlist-in-res.

Carl Hart
High Price
"Drugs are tools."
-------------
Tina Campt
Other Germans

>Peniel Joseph
--Dark Days, Bright Nights: From Black Power to Barack Obama
Tufts U. hist. prof.
--The Bk Power Movement
--Neighb. Rebels

>Kendall Thomas
--Co-ed. Critical Race Theory: The Key Writings That Formed the Movement
Ctr. for the Study of Law and Culture and law prof. at Columbia U. Law Sch.

"racial moralism"
"the"
context--"the word can mean everything and nothing"

recognition vs. indifference
progress vs. retrenchment---> Obama asking for conv. on race but refuses to lead it.

>Farah Griffin
--Harlem Nocturne: Women Artists and Progressive Politics [in] World War II
prof. Eng. and Comp. Lit. + AA Stud. Columbia U.
problem she has w/ personal anecdotes "becomes the end all and be all"
-->gets lost: Pres. Govt. no role for them to do anything about it.
Personal anecdote not good when it trumps what has to be done
-->absurdity of judge's allowing use of "profiling" but not "racial profiling"

Peniel Joseph
The new racism:
--outcomes
--disparities
--only 1.6% [of African Americans] make more than $200K.
--28% below fed. poverty level.
Substantive policy change
beyond

no urban agenda
no confrontation of new Jim Crow

Trayvon Martin: posthumous portrayal as a criminal

841,000 black males in jail

-->The further we deny racism exists the worse it gets

-->Harlem Bklyn gentrified

"We need to confront it and force [the President's] hand."

Kendall Thomas: "privatization of race"
the idea of racism and its "private resolution"
The heart of racism is "economic injustice"

Obama "is himself a commodity" One of the deepest challenges we face is the bankruptcy of a political system controlled by financial elites.

KT calls Reagan the "Architect of liberalism." [I.e., neoliberalism]
KT, cont. "Identity is being mobilized" to discredit claims for justice.

Following KT's comments on neoliberalism:
TINA CAMPT: "The offloading" of the conversation of race into pvt. sphere
-->What wd effective ldrship be?
Peniel: "That's happening already" at grassroots
The Age of Trayvon

People who've abdicated their role of activists for access.
>Those who give Obama a pass.
Ray Kelly: "The nation's biggest racial profiler."
MLK traded access to LBJ's Wh. House for moral clarity

Poor People's March

"can't do the colorblind racism game"

KT discusses "From Protest to Poliics" [by Bayard] Rustin

Griffin: the old-fashioned idea of charismatic leadership
Electoral politics is only one avenue
--Ella Baker
--Ida B. Wells
--Fannie Lou Hamer
grassroots leaders

communities, groups
a model of ldrship

NYT art. about frmr gang ldrs org against violence

FARAH: Stand Yr Grd Laws not explicitly racist but applied not in a race-neutral way.

What do you expect from Obama after his presidency?

Do something about prison, health...

tainted products [being sent to Africa]

K.T. The law's limits are sometimes greater than what it can accomplish
-->On Obama's statement about his children's generation thinking about race.
Hopeful but it's the experience of a very narrow section of African Americans.
Segregation still alive

Racial publics: committed to anti-racist agendas.

K.T. "I am not a person of faith."---No single role orgs can play nor single method.

Peniel: A research org @ Tufts: race and democracy connecting to public policy
"We want public policy transformation[s]"

Farah: Measure of success can't just be by Sasha and Malia but by gulf between Juror B-37 and Rachel Jeantel

Farah: Twitter irritating but allows back-and-forth. "Angry at the access racists have" to her... Messy, but democ. debate

Farah: There's a focus on natl. elections but what about local elections?
"We need to be just as vigilant about those elections as well."

Audience member: African American pols "ghettofied" to narrow districts. Tea Party better organized.

K.T. Talking about "a long revolution." Politics is often about how we imagine ourselves in relation to others. Nation: "imagined community"
"[P]olitics of the imagination" no subst.for hard work but motivates people to think critically and even refuse neolib.

Audience member: What about Alton Maddox?

======
It was then that the panel discussion had to end.

Some Thoughts on Trayvon Martin and Kunstler (a post in progress)

I don't know if Kunstler will mention Trayvon Martin in his blog tomorrow. Last Monday's post suggests a wide gulf between black and white people, particularly younger black people and older white ones. Kunstler came of age before the rise of hip hop but during a time of Black Power. Liberal whites who sympathized with the civil rights movement were put off by Black Power. As they grew older, they didn't know what to make of Afrocentrism or hip hop culture.

What are Kunstler's thoughts on hip hop? Based on his writings, he seems to think it's immature at best and nihilistic at worst. Unaware of the many genres and subgenres contained within hip hop, Kunstler gives Kanye West as an example of the gangsta rapper shouting "N---a!" He is right that a gulf stretches between black and white in America.

I welcome your thoughts as I add to this post.

Kunstler on the Zimmerman Verdict

This column by Kunstler on the Zimmerman verdict appeared on Monday, but I wondered if I should link to it. I decided to post it with this caveat: Kunstler is very astute about the effects of oil scarcity but he has little understanding about this situation.

Kunstler: "A Kid With Skittles"

Kunstler discusses the Trayvon Martin case.

A Kid With Skittles
By James Howard Kunstler
on April 16, 2012 9:54 AM

In the wake of the Trayvon Martin shooting, the excellent Bill Moyers hosted political activist Angela Glover Blackwell on his weekly interview show, Moyers & Company (April 13; "An Activist for Our Times") and in the course of things (12:18 in the program) Ms. Blackwell said, "America does not want to talk about race." In point of fact, we'll talk about it all the live-long day, just not very honestly.

The Trayvon Martin incident certainly provoked a broad media conversation about race all over the cable TV networks and the Internet. It's been an inconclusive discussion because the facts of the case are so muddled and the truth may never be known, or may not satisfy anyone if it becomes known. Mostly, the talk followed predictable patterns of grievance, accusation, and especially hand-wringing - the latter well represented by Bill Moyers, the embodiment of 1960s-vintage idealist Democratic liberalism, who came on the scene as a close aide to President Lyndon Johnson at the height of the civil rights struggle.

The reason the race conversation remains so constricted in America is because the central question makes everyone so uncomfortable. That question is: what accounts for the failure to thrive of such a large percentage of black America? It is uncomfortable for whites (especially Progressives) because it implies a failure of the social justice movement itself, and in particular the watershed civil rights struggles of the 1960s. It's uncomfortable for blacks because it stirs up immense anxiety over the stigma of racial inferiority.

The crucial moment in this recent history of race relations, it seems to me, must be located in the events between 1966 and 1970. This was the historical moment that followed the deconstruction of legal race codes with the passage into law of the Public Accommodations Act of 1964 and then the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These two legislative milestones, promoted and signed by Lyndon Johnson, were supposed to conclude the unfinished business of the Civil War and emancipation, which had festered so long in the Jim Crow inurement.

The expectation was that the removal of legal obstacles to full citizenship would hasten economic justice and cultural equality, but just then something curious happened: the youth revolt of the late 1960s was underway and young black America immediately opted for separatism. Opposition to anything and everything was the motif for my generation back then. A few years after the 1964 Public Accommodations Act passed, the black students at my college demanded (and were given) their own separate student union building. During the riots that followed the Kent State shootings in the Spring of 1971, somebody burned the building down - a mystery never solved.

I believe the black separatist movement of that time derived largely from anxiety around the issues of cultural assimilation - that is, of black and white America forming a true and complete common culture. In any case, it was at this moment of history that the multicultural movement presented itself as an "out" for white America. Multiculturalism allowed white America to pretend that common culture was not important. It also promoted the unfortunate idea that we could have a functioning civil society with different standards of behavior for different ethnic groups. It has left the nation with the unanswered question of black America's self-evident failure to thrive, and an enormous body of narrative affecting to explain it away as "structural racism."

Bill Moyers did not even attempt to address the failure to thrive question in his interview with Angela Glover Blackwell. Both of these people are about as well-intentioned as anyone in the country where race relations are concerned, but neither of them were able to honestly confront the issue. My own opinion is that it's about behavior at least as much as its about race and probably more, and we continue to make tragic decisions in this country about what behavior is okay and what's not. Are there proportionately more black men in prison than members of other races in America? Yes there are, and most of them behaved badly enough to get locked up, whether our drug laws are stupid or not. Is something preventing black children from learning in school? Probably a number of things, but I would begin absolutely with the duty to teach them to speak English intelligibly - something that nobody expresses any interest in, especially white Progressives. Do white people fear black males who affect to act as if they are dangerous? Maybe black men should stop trying to scare people. Are these "racist" observations or exercises in reality-testing?

I doubt even that question can be settled conclusively in our time. The truth is that white America is too uncomfortable with the discomfort of black America and white America will do anything, and will bend any view of reality, in order to avoid the most frightening outcome of all, which is the possibility of race war. Well it's hard not to sympathize with that, but it still leaves us with the burden of all the tragic choices we made since those heady days of 1964 and 1965 when Bill Moyers could stand behind President Johnson signing those landmark civil rights bills, basking in the broad-based belief that real human progress was being made.

I don't know for sure what Trayvon Martin was doing in the moments before George Zimmerman shot him in the Florida condo cluster. The public may never learn what really went on, even after Mr. Zimmerman's trial. People don't get shot for no reason, though sometimes it is not a good reason, or one we want to talk about.

Sepia Mutiny is Defunct

I just found out through a Colorlines article (linked at Feministing) that Sepia Mutiny has stopped publishing. The article discusses the challenges the ethnic blogosphere faces: lack of money and buy-outs.

"This Surely Deserves More Than [Eighteen] Views"