A dubious and self-serving equation long espoused by those scholars reared on identity politics, postcolonialist theory, and the Balkanizing structural imperatives of multiculturalism — given perhaps its most popular airing by Spike Lee, who, rumor has it, once got into a fight with a swirly cone, accusing the vanilla of suffering from jungle fever while berating the chocolate for it’s desire to “assimilate.”
David Thompson explores the trajectory of such thinking, leaving me free to ask the following loaded question: Now that the President-elect of the US is a black man, what does that do to this whole idea of power as a necessary component of racism?
And when will Charles Olgetree chime in to remind us that it is really only the “white part” of Obama that accounts for the power — refusing to see the irony that in presuming in defining the power dynamic, Dr Ogletree has seized control of the very power he tries to pin on those he demonizes, and in so doing preserves his own expert role in the calculus of determining racial hierarchies and what needs to be done about them.
Convenient, that.
Comment by JD on 11/17 @ 10:57 am #
Pre-emptive denunciations and condemnations for all.
Comment by Mossberg500 on 11/17 @ 11:06 am #
Charles Olgetree seems like a “glass half-empty” kid of guy. Just saying.
Comment by dre on 11/17 @ 11:07 am #
Racism = prejudice
+ powerComment by JD on 11/17 @ 11:08 am #
Racism = Not being a mealy-mouth sensitive caring intellectual progressive that voted for Baracky.
Comment by McGehee on 11/17 @ 11:12 am #
Now, now. Effective January 20, 2009, racism = failing to prostrate oneself before The O!ne.
Comment by McGehee on 11/17 @ 11:12 am #
Because effective January 20, 2009, O! is the only black person in America.
Comment by Mossberg500 on 11/17 @ 11:15 am #
Henceforth, all bread will be pumpernickel, aka schwartz rye.
Comment by JHoward on 11/17 @ 11:16 am #
Tompson’s piece is excellent.
Somalian pirates, you know, taking Saudi ships and British crew are merely stepping beyond speaking truth to power in order to personally enact their right to a self-aligned equality, and that in full view of a globe that loudly applauds the majesty of such liberation while squelching its own dissenters, rare as they are allowed to be.
I guess it all fits in there with that whole anti-West “progressivism” thing.
Comment by dre on 11/17 @ 11:17 am #
Racism = prejudice + power like blacks going after koreans in the la riots?
Comment by happyfeet on 11/17 @ 11:21 am #
I worry that yet somewhere in America a little white boy dreams that one day he will grow up to be president.
Comment by David Wynn on 11/17 @ 11:27 am #
While I agree that the racism = prejudice + power definition isn’t a very good one, I think your rejection of it based on the election of Obama is misguided.
Power comes in many forms both centralized and decentralized. Guns are power, law enforcement is power, political influence is power, speech is power, etc etc. I think those who still define racism this way have a case with an Obama election, because I think the equation did not originially imply that power = president. So using Obama as disqualification of the equation isn’t a fair disproof.
Comment by Jeff G. on 11/17 @ 11:31 am #
Ah. So electing a black man as leader of the free world is does not disprove the idea that whites are institutionally committed to retaining all positions of power?
Okay.
I figured as much. After all, the formulation is built to ensure that we never escape its properties.
Comment by JD on 11/17 @ 11:31 am #
How much more powerful can a half-white man be?
Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/17 @ 11:31 am #
Speaking for myself, I rejected that definition about twenty years ago. Obama just applies the coup de grace to the whole idea.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/17 @ 11:35 am #
Hell, apparently electing Jindal to the Louisiana governorship is just more proof of racism, because he’s “acceptably” non-white and non-Baptist.
That’s pretty much it. It’s turtles all the way down and there are no true Scotsmen, so long as brandishing the word still has power.
Comment by Vinnie Plumbero on 11/17 @ 11:37 am #
whoa bud, Is this like a hilarious parody of some pseudo intellectual spew or something? I sure hope you dont take yourself seriously.
Of course racism = prejudice + power. Note the “ism”. Racism is a political philosophy. It is the expression, in America at least, of white-race superiority. What made Hitler a racist rather than just a bigot was the notion that Aryans were superior – and that this superiority needed to be recognized and expressed in political terms. So to in the US – it was white supremacy – as a philosophy, that underlies racism.
No overarching theory that ones race is inherintly superior, no plan to impose that view politically, and/or no power to do so, and it isnt “racism” – it is just bigotry.
I sense that the only people who are resistant to this obvious truth or those who are itching to be able to throw the “racist” charge against lots of people – hopefully lots of black people, so that the charge become so diluted and meaningless, that one escapes its charge even when rightly accused of it.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/17 @ 11:39 am #
Yes, your comment is a parody of pseudo-intellectual spew.
Comment by Carin on 11/17 @ 11:39 am #
Obama was elected despite how racist we are. That’s a testament to his ability.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 11/17 @ 11:41 am #
Dumbest comment of the year award nominee, right there. Racism as defined as white racism.
Comment by Slartibartfast on 11/17 @ 11:42 am #
“Self-evident” is a lot more effective argument by assertion. Still wouldn’t fly here, but it might with people you hang out with.
Comment by dre on 11/17 @ 11:43 am #
“I sense that the only people who are resistant to this obvious truth or those who are itching to be able to throw the “racist†charge against lots of people”
Like Rev. Wright, the faculty at Duke, or Calypso Lois.
Comment by Rob Crawford on 11/17 @ 11:43 am #
What I like is the complete denial of the existence of black supremacists. Look up “Afro-centrism” and goggle at the a-historical nonsense, as absurd as anything that justified the German National Socialist’s Aryan crap.
Comment by Carin on 11/17 @ 11:44 am #
The thing I like most about pseudo intellectual spew-age is that they can make statement like Of course racism = prejudice + power and think that it has any tangible meaning.
You think adding a “plus” and “equal” symbols makes it, like, math? Hey, can you turn it into a proof?
Comment by Noah D on 11/17 @ 11:45 am #
46% of whites voted for McCain, 95% of blacks voted for Obama.
Who’s racist again?
Comment by Slartibartfast on 11/17 @ 11:46 am #
The Rethuglikkkans, naturally.
Comment by JD on 11/17 @ 11:47 am #
Of course racism = prejudice + power.
No need to question your assumptions when your intentions are pure.
Racism is a political philosophy. It is the expression, in America at least, of white-race superiority.
Grand Kleagle Byrd agrees with you. Everyone else? Not so much.
I sense that the only people who are resistant to this obvious truth
I sense you are a mental midget, but you could prove me wrong …
be able to throw the “racist†charge against lots of people – hopefully lots of black people, so that the charge become so diluted and meaningless, that one escapes its charge even when rightly accused of it.
Nope. You went and proved the mental midget thingie there. Though I will give you credit. It would be a good thing to strip the word racism of its meaning. Were it to go back to its actual meaning, rather than the bastardization it has become, that would be a good thing. Because saying someone is skinny, inexperienced, articulate, or saying their middle name, etc … should never be considered racist.
Comment by dicentra on 11/17 @ 11:49 am #
The huge problem with Olgetree’s assertion about Obama’s “white half” is that it fails to take into account the “one-drop” idea that white people held and enforced for so long. If you’re a racist, Obama is blackity black black, no question about it.
Plus the fact that Barack consciously sought out and developed his black identity puts a lie to all that. Barack may not act all gangsta, but he certainly self-identifies as black.
But nothing like watching a race-baiter lose his raisin tray. (That’s French for “reason for being,” for the undereducated among us.)
Comment by dre on 11/17 @ 11:51 am #
So Now It’s Racist to Call Obama Policies “Socialist�
Comment by alppuccino on 11/17 @ 11:58 am #
or Calypso Lois.
Didn’t she work with Bing Crosby in South Pacific Clambake?
Comment by dre on 11/17 @ 12:03 pm #
“Didn’t she work with Bing Crosby in South Pacific Clambake?”
I thought she worked with Abbott & Costello in one of their flicks.
Comment by alppuccino on 11/17 @ 12:04 pm #
The “equals plus” statements are a good tool for all sorts of social phenomena:
Laziness = white + lays around all day
Victimhood = black + lays around all day
Psychosis = white + kills 3 people during robbery
Victimhood = black + kills 3 people during robbery
Obesity = white + McDonalds
Victimhood = big fat sloppy black + McDonalds
Denounce me before I kill again JD.
Comment by alppuccino on 11/17 @ 12:06 pm #
“…statements are a good tool….”
I’ll go and finish 4th grade English now.
Comment by JD on 11/17 @ 12:08 pm #
Consider yourself denounced.
Comment by Bob Reed on 11/17 @ 12:13 pm #
Racism = prejudice + power
It can be argued that bitter, chip-on-the-shoulder, prejudice-like Rev. Wright’s + the power of the race-card play in our modern society = the most insidious kind of racism…
Because that racism is masked by the drivel that it’s not possible to be racist if you’re part of the minority group…
In part, the charge of racism has become powerful because it is in such violent opposition to the enlightenment principles articulated in our constitution as well as the religious immorality implicit in violating the principle that all men are equal in the eyes of God. The inherent hypocrisy, that of equal opportunity and rights under law, are what imputes a moral stigma to those decried as racists. It is also what gave Dr. King’s public arguments such rhetorical and political sway during the civil rights era…
Amazingly, identity politics, postcolonialist theory, and multiculturalism-all ideas that are outgrowths of that same era’s attempts to redress the injustice suffered over time-also suffer from the same fundamental hypocrisies that racism does. And, to boot, are seemingly anathema to the color-blind society that King envisioned…
Necessarily, race awareness and polarization will never completely recede in our society until the grievance peddlers and identity group lobbyists cease to exist. Until these identity driven ideologies are dispensed with, we cannot get back to a society where all are treated equally under law…
Ironically, it was this kind of hierarchy of preference that the founders of this nation attempted to dispense with…
Perhaps we do need another revolution; just not the kind that Ayers, Ogletree, Jesse J, and O! have in mind!
And speaking of Ogletree, hos argument that Obama doesn’t settle the race and opportunity issue will be based on O! lack of authentic blackness-whatever that means. But, he’ll argue, that assuming the educational and societal trappings of white-ness was his only way to power, and that he couldn’t have made it there had he been “keepin’ it real…”
I guess that McWhorter’s opinions on that whole authenticity thing are disqualified also; ‘cuz you know, he kinda actin’ a bit too white too!
Best Wishes
Comment by alppuccino on 11/17 @ 12:14 pm #
Fuck it.
Boozer = white president + drank in college
Unique insight = black president + snorted coke in college
Comment by Pablo Abu Jamal on 11/17 @ 12:22 pm #
I think it makes me a victim of Rev. Wright and Minister Farrakhan. Or half a victim. I should run the numbers again.
Comment by Obstreperous Infidel on 11/17 @ 12:29 pm #
McWhorter? There are no black scotsman! He’s a poseur! Kilpatrick? Well, hell they’re are pleanty of black Irishmen.
NoahD, to be fair. Even if his ass was lily white, he still would have had 90% of the black vote (He still had a D after his name). So the real gain is only the 5 to 9% that has been bantied about.
Do you think Vinnie will stick around?
Comment by Fat Man on 11/17 @ 12:41 pm #
Racism is over. Pull up your goddamn pants, I don’t want to look at your f###ing underwear anymore, oh yes, and tie your shoes, you do know how to tie your shoes — don’t you?
Comment by colagirl on 11/17 @ 1:26 pm #
To me, the formula “racism = prejudice plus power” (or “sexism = prejudice + power” or any variation thereof, essentially arguing that a minority or supposedly disempowered group cannot be racist/sexist/whatever) has always seemed like a bit of sophistry cooked up by those who want to hate, but who want *their* hatred to be somehow okay.
Comment by pdbuttons on 11/17 @ 1:44 pm #
raisin tray -thanks/ that’s a keeper
i’m not a rasict but i’d like to see a chariot race[ben hur stylee] between
chad and sudan cuz we could whip the [horses?]
until they died and it would absolve my guilty
i wouldn’t want to see [horses?] die but i think it would bring the country together- for the common good
i’d prefer stanley kubrick to direct-but he’s dead
spike lee? i’m giving u a finger! cuz your #1
Comment by EW on 11/17 @ 6:00 pm #
I don’t think this has ever really been true totally. Yes people in power were racists but so were many people who weren’t. Power is not a requirement of this equation. I do think that the illuminati have proved this by getting Obama elected.
Comment by JayC on 11/17 @ 6:11 pm #
This is all because, as Jeff has pointed out, we’ve let the definitions get away from us. The proper definition should be:
People who are obsessed by race are racists.
Everyone who has the ability to make a fist (or get a gun, or file a lawsuit, etc.) has power.
Comment by geoffb on 11/17 @ 6:20 pm #
BLT “overarching theory” + President Obama “power to do so” = ????
A new phase of race relations is aborning.