“But there'll be men enough, the scum that we used for overseers, the trash that bought and sold slaves and bred them, the kind who were men with bullwhip and filth without one, the kind who have only one virtue, a white skin.
It's amazing to me how many people misunderstand such a simple idea. There is JUST ONE RACE. But for far too many people it's so easy to make categories, use pejoratives to label someone by their skin tone, hair, nose, yada yada. Far too many people need pariahs and thereby feel superior.
I will never forget that my father would utter "did you see that dumb nigger" as we watched a car run a red light. Of course, we could not see the person at the wheel. And he had the full lexicon of epithets for Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, Jews, indeed, anyone not obviously very white.
I hope Les will continue to call out the presumably liberal press for their ignorance.
Sorry for the video link- it does not contain this exact quote- the quotation was from a news article at the time but I have since lost the article page it was quoted from, and only take notes from printed texts. If you know Soyinka you know he cannot be baited to use the word ‘race’ in conversation. This is most evident in his most celebrated poem, “Telephone Conversation”, link to it in the actual but expiring art form-text- below:
Your first sentence states race has been used to divide. Yet your headline says Trump perpetuates racism. Which do you want? You want to talk about how class politics have been sidelined by nonstop corporate media talk about race? Or do you want to just say "Trump bad"?
The vast majority of working families are sick to death of hearing Trump is a racist. Am I a racist now? I'm a working class white female who used to be a leftist and is now voting for Trump.
Am I now "perpetuating biological racism" because I know Democrats are the greater danger to working families, and to the people's of the world?
I voted for Biden in 2020 and he did not do a single thing he said he would do for working families in GA, in fact he REMOVED the child tax credit. I am voting for Trump this year because I'm sick of this Democrat party. Malcom X hit it on the nose:
<<The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox.>>
If you actually think race is used to divide American workers, you're pushing that very notion with the title of your article.
I have yet to see any article from you in this election season that is consistent with the theme of your latest book. That Democrats are the ones who ruined working American families and who continue to do so. You know this intellectually yet all these essays are just nitpicking Trump and not Harris. You think Harris is different from Biden? Her people want to remove Lena Khan.
Dems have 2x as many corporate dollars as Republicans this election cycle, yet somehow the most important thing to write about is racism????
Dems just took my favorite radio station off the air, because apparently the black guys hosting it, one a retired Baltimore cop and the other a distinguished black intellectual, are "spreading Russian propaganda". But yes, racism, Trump, bad.
Anything truthful is now called propaganda. Just like your news outlets say us southerners are "conspiracy theorists" for saying the government did NOTHING for hurricane victims while sending billions more to Ukraine and Israel.
People in Boone who have lost everything and have no backup and no safety net could not give a F about whatever the heck biological racism is.
I can't find the theme of why I started following you in the first place. All I see are articles along the theme of "Democrats are better than Republicans, Trump bad."
Malcolm X was right. White liberals are far more dangerous (to working families) than conservatives. As much as I laugh at people who announce their exit from internet spaces, I'm done with this publication. This is just the last straw.
It's like a small part of you knows what is true. But most of you is so concerned with fitting in with the "left" (lol), that you end up having no convictions at all. I hope someday you figure this out, but I rarher doubt it at this point. If you wrote that whole book on Wall Street's war on workers and you are still writing headlines of "Trump bad", I do not have much hope in your awakening.
The point of the piece was to get people to stop using the concept of race to describe an ethnicity. I'm critiquing Trump and I'm critiquing liberals. And I think you are wrong about me shilling for the Democrats. I'm one of their most ardent critics. If you read Wall Street's War on Workers you'll see my case. I'm probably harder on them then you are. Thanks for your extensive comment. I hope we can keep the dialogue going.
I was a blue collar worker, rank and file union activist, and local Dem campaign manager for close to 30 years. I fought the takeover of the D party by neoliberals in the late '70s. (That term doesn't mean liberal politics, but rather defenders of the economic status quo, like trickle up.) I witnessed how the D elite dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, and took money from the same corporate sources as the Republicans.
In the late '60s-early '70s I was trained by people who'd been labor organizers in the 1930s. Actual leftists, not the tepid centrists of the current D party. No matter how much the Rs yell hysterically about "leftists" in the D party, there haven't been real ones for decades. It's just a scare tactic. My leftist labor mentors told me that "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." And they did.
I've been commenting on this site for awhile now because I read the book and looked up Les Leopold. When I write about my experiences, that can be dismissed as anecdotal. Merely a personal story. But Les did years of research and statistical analysis to back up the facts he presents. Among them is a study about how the white working class is not racist, becoming more and more accepting over the years. I know (and I bet you do, too) that Hillary Clinton's remark that half of Trump supporters were "a basket of deplorables" was really aimed at the entire working class. That's unforgivable.
Les has been trying to get the Ds to listen because the Rs haven't cared about the common good since the Progressives (reformers) of the 1920s. Historically, the Rs were and are the party of big corporate interests. Les has pointed out over and over that he has the issue that would make the Ds real winners--stock buybacks that cause mass layoffs.
Corporations used to be limited to only using 2% of their profits for this, but because of Reagan era deregulation, they're now up to 90% or more. Which causes stock prices to rise and CEOs (who are given stocks ) and their investment firm allies make out big. But then nothing is left for research and development of new products. Worst of all, the funding for buybacks has come from laying off millions of workers. Why should companies who've taken bail-out money or get government contracts get away with this? Neither Ds nor Rs raise the issue because they're sponsored by the same mega-corporate donors.
I urge you to read the book. Les is very much on our side.
PS--I agree with you about all the $$$ going to Ukraine and Israel while devastated Americans get no help. It's also the reason that our infrastructure is falling apart; no money left to fix bridges, roads, etc.
Since my 1st comment took precedence, I'm bumping in here with what I was originally going to say.
Look at the pronouncements on race by19th and early 20th C. Ivy League professors. Virulent, explicit bigotry without a shred of solid scientific evidence. They simply assumed their own superiority was proof enough. That same "logic" was also applied to the inferior working class of course. BTW, at the turn of the 19th/20th C. only 14 % of the US population was middle class, and that precariously. Like the many who were wiped out in the big recessions of the 1890s.
And yes, of course I know who Howard Fast was--Spartacus. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, who helped finance the huge Hollywood Strike ('45 or '46) My ex, a big powerful guy, was a studio electrician...and, uh, shall we say, union muscle. As a courier, he visited Trumbo in Mexico. Because of this, he had to leave LA. He became a Pac NW union pres. and later, an elected state official. His mentors (who then were mine, too) are who told me "liberals leave the room..."
He was eventually involved in a political payoff (related to biz that "donated" to Spiro Agnew) and did time in a Club Fed. He thought that ridiculous; he said white collar criminals should be thrown in with the general prison population. White collar crime would plummet.
Today's (10/17) Consortium News has a piece John Kiriakou wrote on US prison horrors. Among them how prisoners are treated is related to where they are plus class and especially color. Most are in rural locations. I know from having several rural cousins that anyone with any ambition has to leave for education or a decent paying job. There's little left to clear cut or strip mine. The people who remain often aren't much and some are the type LBJ meant with his adage on pocket picking. The combo of low paid guards and disproportionately BIPOC prisoners is disastrous.
It's amazing to me how many people misunderstand such a simple idea. There is JUST ONE RACE. But for far too many people it's so easy to make categories, use pejoratives to label someone by their skin tone, hair, nose, yada yada. Far too many people need pariahs and thereby feel superior.
I will never forget that my father would utter "did you see that dumb nigger" as we watched a car run a red light. Of course, we could not see the person at the wheel. And he had the full lexicon of epithets for Chinese, Japanese, Blacks, Jews, indeed, anyone not obviously very white.
I hope Les will continue to call out the presumably liberal press for their ignorance.
There’s one humanity, or there isn’t.
- Wole Soyinka and Henry Luis Gates, Jr. in conversation: Loyola Marymount University, March 2022.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=wole+soyinka+and+henry+louis+gayes&iax=videos&ia=videos&iai=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DfJeyo9Fl3AA
Sorry for the video link- it does not contain this exact quote- the quotation was from a news article at the time but I have since lost the article page it was quoted from, and only take notes from printed texts. If you know Soyinka you know he cannot be baited to use the word ‘race’ in conversation. This is most evident in his most celebrated poem, “Telephone Conversation”, link to it in the actual but expiring art form-text- below:
https://www.k-state.edu/english/westmank/spring_00/SOYINKA.html
very cool. thx for sending Never saw that poem before.
Wonderful. Needs to be repeated, over and over.
Your first sentence states race has been used to divide. Yet your headline says Trump perpetuates racism. Which do you want? You want to talk about how class politics have been sidelined by nonstop corporate media talk about race? Or do you want to just say "Trump bad"?
The vast majority of working families are sick to death of hearing Trump is a racist. Am I a racist now? I'm a working class white female who used to be a leftist and is now voting for Trump.
Am I now "perpetuating biological racism" because I know Democrats are the greater danger to working families, and to the people's of the world?
I voted for Biden in 2020 and he did not do a single thing he said he would do for working families in GA, in fact he REMOVED the child tax credit. I am voting for Trump this year because I'm sick of this Democrat party. Malcom X hit it on the nose:
<<The white conservatives aren't friends of the Negro either, but they at least don't try to hide it. They are like wolves; they show their teeth in a snarl that keeps the Negro always aware of where he stands with them. But the white liberals are foxes, who also show their teeth to the Negro but pretend that they are smiling. The white liberals are more dangerous than the conservatives; they lure the Negro, and as the Negro runs from the growling wolf, he flees into the open jaws of the "smiling" fox.>>
If you actually think race is used to divide American workers, you're pushing that very notion with the title of your article.
I have yet to see any article from you in this election season that is consistent with the theme of your latest book. That Democrats are the ones who ruined working American families and who continue to do so. You know this intellectually yet all these essays are just nitpicking Trump and not Harris. You think Harris is different from Biden? Her people want to remove Lena Khan.
Dems have 2x as many corporate dollars as Republicans this election cycle, yet somehow the most important thing to write about is racism????
Dems just took my favorite radio station off the air, because apparently the black guys hosting it, one a retired Baltimore cop and the other a distinguished black intellectual, are "spreading Russian propaganda". But yes, racism, Trump, bad.
Anything truthful is now called propaganda. Just like your news outlets say us southerners are "conspiracy theorists" for saying the government did NOTHING for hurricane victims while sending billions more to Ukraine and Israel.
People in Boone who have lost everything and have no backup and no safety net could not give a F about whatever the heck biological racism is.
I can't find the theme of why I started following you in the first place. All I see are articles along the theme of "Democrats are better than Republicans, Trump bad."
Malcolm X was right. White liberals are far more dangerous (to working families) than conservatives. As much as I laugh at people who announce their exit from internet spaces, I'm done with this publication. This is just the last straw.
It's like a small part of you knows what is true. But most of you is so concerned with fitting in with the "left" (lol), that you end up having no convictions at all. I hope someday you figure this out, but I rarher doubt it at this point. If you wrote that whole book on Wall Street's war on workers and you are still writing headlines of "Trump bad", I do not have much hope in your awakening.
The point of the piece was to get people to stop using the concept of race to describe an ethnicity. I'm critiquing Trump and I'm critiquing liberals. And I think you are wrong about me shilling for the Democrats. I'm one of their most ardent critics. If you read Wall Street's War on Workers you'll see my case. I'm probably harder on them then you are. Thanks for your extensive comment. I hope we can keep the dialogue going.
I was a blue collar worker, rank and file union activist, and local Dem campaign manager for close to 30 years. I fought the takeover of the D party by neoliberals in the late '70s. (That term doesn't mean liberal politics, but rather defenders of the economic status quo, like trickle up.) I witnessed how the D elite dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, and took money from the same corporate sources as the Republicans.
In the late '60s-early '70s I was trained by people who'd been labor organizers in the 1930s. Actual leftists, not the tepid centrists of the current D party. No matter how much the Rs yell hysterically about "leftists" in the D party, there haven't been real ones for decades. It's just a scare tactic. My leftist labor mentors told me that "liberals are the ones who leave the room when the fight starts." And they did.
I've been commenting on this site for awhile now because I read the book and looked up Les Leopold. When I write about my experiences, that can be dismissed as anecdotal. Merely a personal story. But Les did years of research and statistical analysis to back up the facts he presents. Among them is a study about how the white working class is not racist, becoming more and more accepting over the years. I know (and I bet you do, too) that Hillary Clinton's remark that half of Trump supporters were "a basket of deplorables" was really aimed at the entire working class. That's unforgivable.
Les has been trying to get the Ds to listen because the Rs haven't cared about the common good since the Progressives (reformers) of the 1920s. Historically, the Rs were and are the party of big corporate interests. Les has pointed out over and over that he has the issue that would make the Ds real winners--stock buybacks that cause mass layoffs.
Corporations used to be limited to only using 2% of their profits for this, but because of Reagan era deregulation, they're now up to 90% or more. Which causes stock prices to rise and CEOs (who are given stocks ) and their investment firm allies make out big. But then nothing is left for research and development of new products. Worst of all, the funding for buybacks has come from laying off millions of workers. Why should companies who've taken bail-out money or get government contracts get away with this? Neither Ds nor Rs raise the issue because they're sponsored by the same mega-corporate donors.
I urge you to read the book. Les is very much on our side.
PS--I agree with you about all the $$$ going to Ukraine and Israel while devastated Americans get no help. It's also the reason that our infrastructure is falling apart; no money left to fix bridges, roads, etc.
Thanks so much for your kind words. You certainly have captured what I've been trying to do. Tough sledding.
Since my 1st comment took precedence, I'm bumping in here with what I was originally going to say.
Look at the pronouncements on race by19th and early 20th C. Ivy League professors. Virulent, explicit bigotry without a shred of solid scientific evidence. They simply assumed their own superiority was proof enough. That same "logic" was also applied to the inferior working class of course. BTW, at the turn of the 19th/20th C. only 14 % of the US population was middle class, and that precariously. Like the many who were wiped out in the big recessions of the 1890s.
And yes, of course I know who Howard Fast was--Spartacus. Screenplay by Dalton Trumbo, who helped finance the huge Hollywood Strike ('45 or '46) My ex, a big powerful guy, was a studio electrician...and, uh, shall we say, union muscle. As a courier, he visited Trumbo in Mexico. Because of this, he had to leave LA. He became a Pac NW union pres. and later, an elected state official. His mentors (who then were mine, too) are who told me "liberals leave the room..."
He was eventually involved in a political payoff (related to biz that "donated" to Spiro Agnew) and did time in a Club Fed. He thought that ridiculous; he said white collar criminals should be thrown in with the general prison population. White collar crime would plummet.
Today's (10/17) Consortium News has a piece John Kiriakou wrote on US prison horrors. Among them how prisoners are treated is related to where they are plus class and especially color. Most are in rural locations. I know from having several rural cousins that anyone with any ambition has to leave for education or a decent paying job. There's little left to clear cut or strip mine. The people who remain often aren't much and some are the type LBJ meant with his adage on pocket picking. The combo of low paid guards and disproportionately BIPOC prisoners is disastrous.