Pitts: 'Race is the stupidest idea in history'

Sums up Pitts:  "Race is the stupidest idea in history. It is also, arguably, the most powerful."

His meditation on race -- and humanity's relatively recent preoccupation with race, and how it determines identity -- is worth reading in full.  

In America, attitudes and prejudices about race concern mostly blacks, and mostly black males, in negative ways.  Ironically,

When Africans were gathered on the shores of that continent to be packed into the reeking holds of slave ships for the voyage to this country, they saw themselves as Taureg, Mandinkan, Fulani, Mende or Songhay -- not black. As Noel Ingnatiev, author of How The Irish Became White, has observed, those Africans did not become slaves because they were black. They “became” black because they were enslaved.

On the flip side, continues Pitts:

I’ve often thought the word “white” had a tendency to discomfit the people to whom it is applied, to carry some hint of accusation that is no less real for being unspoken. In my experience, white people are often ill at ease with being referred to as white people.

There is, I think, a reason for that. “Black” and “white” are equally artificial, but black fairly quickly took on the contours of a real culture.

Whereas "white" includes all the categories not covered by anything else. Like on those applications and Census forms, where we white guys are supposed to check "Non-Hispanic White." [SPOILER ALERT: I'm white.] That's a pretty big catch-all, if you ask me.  Although there is a lot of truth to this, too: http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/ . So maybe a true "white guy" culture with our own shared historical identity -- shaped by pop culture and consumption trends -- is indeed coalescing in America?....

Seriously though, I should add that, among academics, the idea is taking hold that we should talk about ethnicity, not race. FYI, here's as good a definition of ethnicity or ethnic groups as any:

An ethnic group is a social category of people who share a common culture, such as a common language, a common religion, or common norms, customs, practices, and history. Ethnic groups have a consciousness of their common cultural bond. An ethnic group does not exist simply because of the common national or cultural origins of the group, however. They develop because of their unique historical and social experiences, which become the basis for the group’s ethnic identity. For example, prior to immigration to the United States, Italians did not think of themselves as a distinct group with common interests and experiences. However, the process of immigration and the experiences they faced as a group in the United States, including discrimination, created a new identity for the group. 

If you accept this definition then you must conclude, as Pitts has, that the term "African-American" is meaningless. Indeed, a long time ago I babysat for an African-American woman who emigrated from South Africa, and she was white as can be. But there are even more subtle but important distinctions than that among the so-called African-American community....

P.S. -- Happy New Year!  (That is, if you subscribe to the Western-European-centric Gregorian calendar....)

Dumbest idea in history? Race

By Leonard Pitts, Jr.

January 1, 2013 | Miami Herald

URL: http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/01/01/178695/commentary-dumbest-idea-in-history.html#storylink=cpy

Poll: Half of GOP believes ACORN stole '12 elections

So... we already knew that dead people all vote Democrat; now we learn that 48 percent of Republicans believe that a dead umbrella organization is helping them to do it.  Oy vey!

I wonder what Zombie Reagan and Abraham Lincoln, Vampire Hunter, have to say about all this undead political activity?

Republican Voters Pretty Sure 2012 Election Was Stolen By Non-Existent Organization

By Jason Linkins

December 4, 2012 | Huffington Post

URL: http://huff.to/SvNsw7

Welfare abuse by Negroes goes back to 1866?

I stumbled upon this picture here. To see it is fascinating, sad, and in an odd way encouraging for my convictions, because it just confirmed for me that ignorant or just plain racist whites have always found excuses to call blacks lazy welfare moochers.

Think about it: Some whites back then had the gall to complain that Negroes were enjoying idleness at the expense of taxpayers, when only one year earlier almost all 4 million African-Americans had been slaves, working for nothing! And work for nothing they did -- for 240 years!

Jesus, I thought the annoying phrase "Get over it," was a recent invention, but it seems the sentiment behind it is very American and very old. Whites were telling freed slaves to "Get over it" only months after slavery had ended. Imagine!

You can read more about the Freedmen's Bureau, initiated by President Lincoln before his assassination, here.

Blankley's touching pro-Bush op-ed: The Lonely Prez

I have to admit, this op-ed is touching. Bush as modern day Lincoln? A "country bumpkin" and "accidental president" who is the only one, including his generals, who really gets the war? I want to believe it, but... nah, it's assinine. As Blankley feels for Bush, so I too feel for Blankley: Despite his jaunty orange and yellow gangster-cut suits, he looks lonlier and more caged-in with each passing week on the McLaughlin Group. You can only be laughed at by your fellow Group members so many times before it starts to get to you....

God Bless and Merry Christmas, Tony!

The Lonely President

By Tony Blankley

December 13, 2006 | Human Events

The American presidency has been called "A Glorious Burden" by the Smithsonian Museum, and the loneliest job in the world by historians. As we approach Christmas 2006 Anno Domini, President Bush is surely fully seized of the loneliness and burden of his office.

For rarely has a president stood more alone at a moment of high crisis than does our president now as he makes his crucial policy decisions on the Iraq War. His political opponents stand triumphant, yet barren of useful guidance. Many -- if not most -- of his fellow party men and women in Washington are rapidly joining his opponents in a desperate effort to save their political skins in 2008. Commentators who urged the president on in 2002-03, having fallen out of love with their ideas, are quick to quibble with and defame the president.

James Baker, being called out of his business dealings by Congress to advise the president, has delivered a cynical document intended to build a political consensus for "honorable" surrender. Richard Haas (head of the Council on Foreign Relations) spoke approvingly of the Baker report on "Meet the Press," saying: " It's incredibly important ... that the principle lesson [of our intervention in Iraq] not be that the United States is unreliable or we lacked staying power ... to me it is essentially important for the future of this country that Iraq be seen, if you will, as Iraq's failure, not as America's failure."

That such transparent sophism from the leader of the American foreign policy establishment is dignified with the title of realism only further exemplifies the loneliness of the president in his quest for a workable solution to the current danger.

Not surprisingly the most recent polls show just 21 percent approval of his handling of the war -- an 8 percent drop since the election, and that mostly from Republicans and conservatives. Overall, his job approval level is down to 31 percent.

If Washington gossip is right, even many of the president's own advisers in the White House and the key cabinet offices have given up on success. Official Washington, the media and much of the public have fallen under the unconscionable thrall of defeatism. Which is to say that they cannot conceive of a set of policies -- for a nation of 300 million with an annual GDP of over $12 trillion and all the skills and technologies known to man -- to subdue the city of Baghdad and environs. Do you think Gen. Patton or Abe Lincoln or Winston Churchill or Joseph Stalin would have thrown their hands up and said, "I give up, there's nothing we can do"?

Or do you suppose they would have said, let's send in as many troops as we can assemble to hold on while we raise more troops to finish the job. If the victory is that important -- and it is -- then failure must be unthinkable, even if it takes another five or 10 years.

And yet, when I exclusively interviewed two members of the Baker commission last week, they explicitly told me that they didn't propose increased troop strength because their military advisers told them it wasn't currently available.

Well, in 1943, we didn't have the troop strength for D-Day in 1944, and in 1863, we didn't have the troop strength (or the strategies) for the victory of 1865. But we had enough to hold on until the troops could be recruited and trained (and winning strategies developed). And so we do today. I have been told by reliable military experts that we can introduce upward of 50,000 combat troops promptly -- enough to hold on until more help can be on the way. [I keep asking: Where are these troop reinforcements supposed to come from??? Somebody enlighten me. See:

http://www.cnn.com/2006/POLITICS/12/14/us.iraq.ap/index.html -- J]

Sometimes, current tactical logistical weaknesses must not be used as an excuse for, or a signal of, strategic failure. In 1861, newly elected President Abraham Lincoln faced such a dilemma over the siege of Ft. Sumter. He had decided to ignore his military advice to surrender the fort. While the final published version of his explanation for this decision in his July 4, 1861 Message to Congress did not reflect his personal anxiety in coming to that decision, it might be useful to President Bush to read Lincoln's first, unpublished, draft -- which did reflect his mental anguish as he tried to decide. All his military advisers, after due consideration, believed that Fort Sumter had to be evacuated. But Lincoln's first draft read:

"In a purely military point of view, this reduced the duty of the administration, in this case, to the mere matter of getting the garrison safely out of the Fort -- in fact, General Scott advised that this should be done at once -- I believed, however, that to do so would be utterly ruinous -- that the necessity under which it was to be done, would not be fully understood -- that, by many, it would be construed as a part of a voluntary policy -- that at home, it would discourage the friends of the Union, embolden its foes, and insure to the latter a recognition of independence abroad -- that, in fact, it would be our national destruction consummated. I hesitated." (see "Lincoln's Sword," pp 79-80; by Douglas Wilson).

Lincoln was alone in the self-same rooms now occupied by George Bush. All his cabinet and all his military advisors had counseled a path Lincoln thought would lead to disaster. He was only a month in office and judged by most of Washington -- including much of his cabinet -- to be a country bumpkin who was out of his league, an accidental president. Alone, and against all advice he made the right decision -- as he would do constantly until victory.

Mr. President, you are not alone. The ghost of Old Abe is on your shoulder. God Bless you and Merry Christmas.