Part two in a series.
There’s a rising tide on the rivers of blood
But if the answer isn’t violence, neither is your silence– Pop Will Eat Itself, “Ich Bin Ein Auslander”
When all is said and done, nothing communicates the racism and knee-buckling stupidity of all-too-wide swaths of our nation quite like video. So if you don’t trust me to tell the truth about these folks, maybe you’ll trust their own words.
Part one in a series.
Listen to the victim, abused by the system
The basis is racist, you know that we must face this
In 1991 Pop Will Eat Itself produced one of the most damning comments on racism in society in the history of popular music. “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” was specifically aimed at anti-immigrant racism in Europe, but over the past 17 years it’s been impossible for me to hear the song without mapping its penetrating, undeniable truth onto our American context. Our black auslanders aren’t recent arrivals (although many of our brown ones are), but they nonetheless remain social, political, economic and cultural outsiders, and whatever progress they may have made in the several hundred years since they first arrived in shackles, only a fool can believe that the basis is no longer racist.
I said some time back, as the presidential election lurched into overdrive, that the heavy racist stuff was coming. Read more
If you’re following America’s electoral theater at all, you know that we have a candidate with a preacher problem. And that the candidate in question has been put in the uncomfortable position of having to repudiate some of said preacher’s remarks (while not alienating those voters in the flock who actually, you know, agree with what the Reverend was saying). In case you haven’t been paying attention, the controversial cleric has pronounced God’s doom upon certain of the nation’s citizens, and the backlash against him and his favorite for the White House has significantly damaged the candidate’s chances.
Of course, I’m talking about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Barack Obama. Errr, wait … that’s not right. That’s not who I’m talking about at all. Read more
I guess there’s probably nothing Earth-shattering about revelations that FOX News “journalist” Sean Hannity was BFFs with a white supremacist. I mean, even if you don’t expect it, it’s not the sort of information that’s going to turn your whole worldview upside-down, you know?
But the latest screed from Pat Buchanan almost buckles the knees. We don’t exactly look to Pat for enlightened thinking on race or, well, on anything. But even by his standards these March 21 comments are barely to be believed. Read more
lullaby pit 