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What's wrong with this image? If you're not white, just about everything.
It began innocently enough—a
Facebook remark from someone who said he didn’t understand the hullabaloo over
the football team nickname “Redskins.” It’s just a name, he suggested, and
those getting excited about it are victims of Political Correctness (PC) run
amok. In a sincere effort to educate, not excoriate, I responded that were he a
Native American, he might feel quite differently about tags such as the
Washington Redskins, Atlanta Braves, Chicago Blackhawks, or Cleveland Indians.
How would be respond to a team named the Atlanta Honkies, I asked. I should
have stayed the course on politeness. When he responded that he’d find it
“funny,” I suggested that this was because he had grown up with privilege.
That led to an outburst on how both
he and his parents had worked hard and sacrificed, as if the only sort of
privilege possible in America is measured in monetary terms. I confess inward
chuckling when I hear this from conservatives. It amuses me no end when they unwittingly
espouse Marxist ideas, but I wasn’t about to go into the radical materialist
assumptions embedded in reducing humankind to homo economicus. Instead, I blithely continued on the educational
course and suggested he look up critical race theory and perhaps Google Tim
Wise. For this I was denounced as a leftwing intellectual. (Well you got me
there! I was under the impression that thinking was a good thing, but
apparently it’s passé.)
Assuming that you do wish to think, I’d
recommend the above course as a starting point for understanding the thorny
issues of race and identity. One of Wise’s steady drumbeats is that white
privilege operates most perniciously when we don’t think about it—it’s like the oxygen we breathe in that we
take it as a given unless we’re choking. We may indeed start to choke on white
privilege. Let’s try a more familiar phrase: “The horse has already left the
barn.” Whether we wish it, like it, see it, or deny it, the United States of
America is a profoundly multicultural nation–perhaps the most multicultural
land on the planet since the height of the Roman Empire. We have become the Ku
Klux Klan’s worst nightmare: a land that’s white, but also black, brown,
yellow, and red. At some point in the very near future, the rainbow is going to
outnumber the whites. Rail at leftwing loonies all you want, but it’s not going
to change the demographic arc. The refusal to look at the trends is itself a
form of white privilege—if you haven’t looked, it’s because you haven’t had to. You will.
Maybe I should have stuck to the politeness
theme. Or maybe not. Here’s another way in which white privilege works: you
assume that someone who is telling
you something is actually seeking your approval.
On the mascot controversy, native peoples are not asking anyone for a favor; they are telling whites that they’re fed up with being disrespected. They’re
telling us that they own their
identities and that we don’t have the right to market or parody them. They’re telling us they’re not going to buy the
“it’s just name” assertion, and they’re telling
us that, no, they don’t plan to shut up about it.
Concerning the last point, there’s
nothing new about the Redskins controversy; it’s been going on for decades. You’d
think, at some point white-owned teams might get the idea that Native Americans
are going to continue to press the issue morally and legally. The University of North Dakota is facing
possible NCAA sanctions for stubbornly refusing to change their Fighting Sioux
nickname. Florida State University took a more productive course and sought permission to use the Seminoles name.
(It was granted.) If local tribes say no, though, they need to find a new
mascot. Lots of schools have done so, including Dartmouth University, St.
John’s University, and the University of Massachusetts. It’s possible, even
likely given that sports have more clout than morality, that some teams will
stubbornly refuse to dump insulting monikers. That’s called power, folks, not
ethics.
If you still don’t get it, let me go
back to civility. Doesn’t someone have a fundamental right to be addressed as
they wish? Isn’t that just a basic rule of respect? I used to be called “Bob.”
I never liked it (for completely personal reasons) and at some point I became
“Rob.” Those who cared made the adjustment. This personal rule extends
collectively and it bleeds into the realm of what you can and can’t do if you want to get on it
society. We’ve miles to travel as a culture before justice pours down like
rain, but in my lifetime, homosexuals went from being called “fags” to being
gay. “Niggers” became Negroes, then became Afro Americans and African
Americans. These changes did not occur becasue straight white people woke up and decided to be nice; they happened because those communities told us enough is enough.There are still far too many media portrayals of mincing queens,
pimps, and ghetto thugs poisoning our society, but figures such as effeminate swishers, Buckwheat,
Steppin’ Fetchit, Little Black Sambo, and Aunt Jemima went away because those
images were hurtful (and political dynamite).
In essence, the price of cultural peace is at least a modicum of respect. You simply couldn’t get away with
naming a 21st century team the Atlanta Houseboys. If you think such
a name would be “funny” and that all of this is just PC humorlessness, try it
on for size. How about the Louisiana State White Trash? The Boston Drunken Irishmen?
The Miami Fat-assed Trailer Park Whores? The University of West Virginia
Toothless Cretins? Do these
offend? I hope so. Now do you get it? Still having trouble? How about this?
I’ve seen reams of stuff written by nervous parents about bullying. You tell me
the difference between bullies and stadiums full of people badgering Native
Americans every fall weekend.
Until World War One, the labor
movement, Irish nationalism, and socialism knew no national boundaries and a
figure such as politician/rebel/songwriter James Connolly (1868-1916) was as
famous in North America as in Ireland or the British Isles. His death at the
hands of a British firing squad in the wake of the failed Easter Uprising was
mourned across the globe. A new recording and accompanying songbook takes us
inside of Connolly’s life, causes, and the protest songs he and others penned
and cherished. It’s more than a nostalgia piece, although it evokes the sort of
movement songs that dominated the pages of Sing
Out! during its early years. The project is the brainchild of Mat Callahan,
a San Francisco-based activist and musician who honed his teeth on political
rock. This album, for the most part, has a folksier feel. It features nine
songs written by Connolly, including “Human Freedom,” “When Labor Calls,” and
“Watchword of Labor,” which were known to North American members of the
Industrial Workers of the World. (Connolly joined the IWW when lived in
America.) The remaining four songs are three in Connolly’s honor, including
Irish poet Patrick Galvin’s moving “Where is James Connolly?” and Jim Connell’s internationally famous “The
Red Flag.” The last is one of the few tracks that doesn’t quite work, as it is
given an agit-rock treatment in which the music overwhelms the lyrics–the
latter being the point of social protest music. Aside from this slip, the 13
musicians of the Songs of Freedom Band evoke the community exuberance of comrades
singing in support of unions, socialism, and Irish freedom. Callahan’s edited edition
of the 1907 The James Connolly Songbook
is the sort of historical artifact that’s didactic, but which also makes you
think that modern movements could learn a few lessons by delving into it. In
Connolly’s spirit, both the CD and the book are borders-defying projects
assembled and funded in Ireland, Switzerland, and the United States. 
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