White men don’t have to reach a bar of excellence; the bar will find white men wherever they already are.

A repost
Before you read the excellent article below. Let me explain a two or three things that happened a couple of weeks ago.

I

A white co-worker of mine said something to me not long before Trump's speech that I've heard other white people say about him. These white people look sad then say "He has no filter." What these white people are inadvertently telling me is, "I am like Trump. I don't say it out loud. And I think all white people are like me and Trump. We just know better than to say it out loud." 

White people like this are comfortable saying such things directly to my black face because they think protesting racism and simply mentioning race at all are the same as the white racism they have against THOSE PEOPLE echoing in their own heads.

So I think I understand what "Trump sounds more presidential" means when it comes out of a white face.

II

Trump managed to keep much of his white ethnoracism behind his teeth for a whole 20 minutes, whatever the duration of his first speech to congress was.  He was able to do it because he was reading it and did not deviate (sounds like)

After that one speech he was applauded and called "more presidential" by white run news outlets everywhere. The press's retreat into normalizing that thing in the White House made my stomach contents start to rise...had to cover my mouth and run to the bathroom.

Believe me. I understood that the bar for white men is low before this year. But now I know understand that bar to be on the ground, below sea level, buried in dog crap and mud.

III

Trump, Affleck, ‘La La Land’ And The Unendingly Low Bar For White Men

by David Dennis Jr. at StillCrew.com

• "Here’s what the La La Land crew, Casey Affleck and Donald Trump have in common: they found the most basic ground-levels of human decency and are waiting for society’s bar to take the elevator down to meet them."

 

I’ve spent the last eight years pretty confident that George W. Bush would be the dumbest president I’d see in my lifetime. His sartorial blunders, which seem pretty tame now, were legendary and pop culture cornerstones for years. The “fool me once” bit or the “put food on your family” quotes struck America as much as, oh, say, faking reasons to start a disastrous war or ignoring floating black bodies in New Orleans.

Bush, however, resurfaced last week with some quotes about the current administration, lambasting Trump for his racist policies, Muslim ban and attacks on the media. One quote, however, stood out to me the most:

“I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy.”

One word stayed with me.

Indispensable....

This caused me to go back and look at George W. Bush’s speeches. And for as dumb as we’ve pretty much accepted him to be, he sounds infinitely more qualified to be president than Donald Trump. The same Donald Trump who, on Tuesday, blamed former President Obama for current White House leaks, Jews for anti-Semitic abuses and soldiers for their own demise...  

I read this whole thing thinking. "Yes. Yes. Yes. Me too."
So read more
 https://stillcrew.com/trump-affleck-la-la-land-and-the-unendlingly-low-bar-for-white-men-3027225600bb#.7awifcsq2 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY NEEDS TO GET READY FOR A NASTY FIGHT

I believe this. I knew this to be the truth the day after the election. If the democrats need to filibuster until no Supreme Court justice can be chosen, then that's what they need to do. The lower courts have been stacked by President Obama -- a tie doesn't hurt us if we keep 8 judges. I'm glad others see it too.

Headline

It's time for Democrats
to fight dirty

So what should Democrats do?

Take a page from the GOP playbook and obstruct everything.

One of the most galling things about the complete Republican takeover of American government that we witnessed last month is the way it rewarded the party's destructive behavior during the Obama years. Not only did voters never punish Republican leaders for pouring sand into the gas tank of representative democracy, they granted them victories in nearly every contested House and Senate race, proving incontrovertibly that voters simply do not care about or understand the ways that Republican leadership subverted longstanding norms of parliamentary procedure.

In perhaps the most brazen violation of democratic norms in living memory, the Republicans just stole the colossally important swing seat on the Supreme Court by obliterating precedent and refusing even to hold hearings for Merrick Garland.

http://theweek.com/articles/664458/time-democrats-fight-dirty?

This is what I believe should happen. But I don't believe this fighting tooth and nail is going to happen.

Bernie Sanders, one of the politicians furthest left, immediately started talking about "getting away from identity politics" which means let's get back to "colorblind" politics and grab those white voters back without identifying their white supremacy problem. And he wasn't alone in this ridiculous theory.

Let's use colorblind racism in our approach to politics almost has to be what Bernie means, in particular, when you consider the fact that he does NOT WANT to identify Trump voters
as patriarchal white racists that voted for the patriarchal white racism coming out of Trump's mouth daily for months on end OR saw patriarchal white racism and its attending misogyny, homophobia and islamophobia as so insignificant that they voted for him anyway because they are patriarchal white racism enablers
who don't deserve to be distinguished from
patriarchal white and wanna-be-white supremacists with attending misogynistic, homophobic, anti-semitic, and islamophobic tendencies.

My question is how can we punish the led by white left if they don't go after alt-Right and Trump like they mean business?

Donald Trump's win has ensured a white supremacy win is blowing through both parties. All some white democrats can think about is abandoning the strategy of keeping the 1/3 of whites they have and solidifying a POC* vote and instead getting those white supremacists and white supremacist enablers back on the democratic side....without identifying the white supremacy problem so as not to offend them. We, as people of color, may not have the option to vote for a weather vane politician anymore, knowing we will remain stagnant. The next set of politicians running for office, from the left or from the right, are going to be going after the white supremacists or white supremacist enablers which they've renamed "the white working class." I'm not saying there will be no difference between left and right. I'm saying the gap is going to be much smaller than it was. And with Trump having pointed the way to just how much white denial can be counted on, the next alt-Right guy --who almost has to be smarter -- is going probably going be red all over with horns and a tail. And the white led democrats are going to try to get a piece of the white supremacy vote while trying to appear to be nice. If something doesn't knock the Bleached Blond Buffoon off his twittering white pedestal (and something MIGHT because he's dumber than a rock and doesn't like to read or listen to anyone), then we need a people of color led political party only depending on one-third of white people for support. And the new political party has to be people of color led. White people slip into denial about the severity and extend of white supremacy regularly.

Trump and alt-Right have been constructing themselves since the Reagan years. Black and brown people have known this the entire time. Yet, white liberals couldn't see it or hear about the deadliness of Reagan and white violence from POCs until 30 years too late because, suffering a different from of white racism, white liberals ALSO assume black and brown people think everything is about race.

Liberal white people willfully refuse to comprehend that the people being stomped on always know more about the stomper than the stomper's family and friends, not until its 30 years too late. With very few exceptions, liberal white people always see white racism quasi-clearly only after it's 30 years behind them. Rarely have they seen white supremacy in white individuals in the present. However, a few whites are better at seeing white supremacy in 2016 than they were in 1986. There really isn't any doubt about this. But the change hasn't been enough and the change hasn't come in large enough numbers. Bernie Bros and Pantsuit Nationalists back slide when the -isms and phobias attached to whiteness get tough.

This is why we need a people of color led political party. People of color and white people need to investigate one another's identities -- culture, history, current issues-- then try to move forward together.

ARE YOU SCARED YET?

Feeling Rebloggy

CHAUNCEY DeVEGA OF SALON.COM SAYS,

"Black folks — and Hispanics and Latinos and Arabs and Muslims and all people of color and women and gays and lesbians and those with disabilities —

Are you scared yet? 

You should be.

During his presidential campaign Donald Trump promised to “take care of our African-American people” and now Trump is following through in his own special way.

Trump, a man who spent years trying to show that the country’s first black president was illegitimate and not eligible to hold office because of his “country of birth” (read: skin color) ran a political campaign that nakedly and boldly used racism, nativism and bigotry to win over white voters. Trump was successful in his quest and will be the 45th president of the United States of America. There will be no “pivot” to a kinder and more humane and less racist Trump. only the naive and pandering chattering class have convinced themselves such a thing is possible.

President-elect Trump is now putting in place the people necessary to implement an agenda based on white identity politics ["not white working class politics" as the white left, including Bernie Sanders has been pushing.]

Read More

Headline

Will we see a repeat of Redemption, the post-Civil War white backlash?

http://www.salon.com/2016/11/22/donald-trump-will-take-care-of-the-african-americans-will-we-see-a-repeat-of-redemption-the-post-civil-war-white-backlash/