Wednesday, October 20, 2010

White Supremacy Is A Praxis

Why the Wire should really be studied and then taken off television

In my opinion, The Wire is neo-colonialism propaganda television. Yes colonialism occurs domestically and particularly in our urban areas....What [Ishmael] Reed has traditionally argued, and I’m sure I’ll be corrected if wrong, is that shows like The Wire and Hollywood’s work in general are normally devoid of Blacks being able to move off the plantation physically or mentally..
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Housing crisis hits blacks hardest.


Study finds median wealth for single black women at $5.

Let's just blame black women for everything.



However, that people are often complicit in degrading themselves is also in “The Wire” at points. And in this very key season where we were looking at these kids, we were very careful to include the parenting. With the exception of Randy’s foster mom – and telling you it’s a foster mom – and ultimately Colvin and his wife, taking their empty nest and making a place for Namond, the parenting is abysmal.

We were issuing a challenge on the other side. All of these societal hypocrisies may be true, and all of their reduced expectations and reduced need for these kids from West Baltimore in terms of the greater economy, the greater society, may be true. And we may be marginalizing them from birth. That does not absolve you, in the sense of being parents with personal responsibility, personal choice, from exercising your own demand for dignity and existential purpose and relevance for you and your kids. We were saying both simultaneously.

There’s a lot to indict the school system in Baltimore for. But the other thing that has to be acknowledged is, they’re not inheriting kids who are coming in in the same situation as in the counties, black or white. These county educators that want to apply county solutions – and also lay people who want to comment on the Internet about how, “If the kids would just do this” or “If the school system would just do that” – it’s really ignoring a fundamental thing that I think Season Four did say, which is that a lot of damage has already been done, even in these kids’ earliest years, clearly.


Ashley Todd. Bethany Storro. Laetitia "Daughter Of The System". Brianna "Mother Of The Game".

These post-racial White Men are too weakened and decadent from mingling to save black folks from themselves. Try as they might. They need purification. Renewal.

It's not enough just to have all the money and power, they need also love, gratitude and adoration:

David Simon:

There's two little pieces of the American myth that get sold a lot. One of them is if you're more clever than the next guy, if you build a better mousetrap, if you're slick, if you're smart, you'll succeed in this country. And I think that's true. That part of the American myth is not myth. The business climate has changed a lot and the economy has changed a lot, but that's always true. That's capitalism. The other part of the myth that I think has been proven a lie in the past 20, 25 years is that if you're not smarter than the next guy, if you're not slick or clever, but if you're willing to get up every day and work your ass off and come home and be a citizen and be committed to your family and your job and whoever you work for, there will be a place for you, and you won't be betrayed. And I think that has been proven to be a lie.


Slavoj Zizek:

And I can tell you this from my wonderful experience here, you want a shocking story you will hear it. How did I become here a friend, a true friend, am not advising anybody to do it because it was a risky gesture, but it worked wonderfully with a -with a -with a black, African-American guy. No? How did I become? We were very friendly, already, but not really, but then I risk and told him, it’s a horrible thing I warn you, is it true that you blacks you know have a big penis, no? but that you can even move it so that if you have on your leg above your knee a fly you can Boff! smash it with your penis. The guy embraced me and told me dying of laughter “now you can call me a nigger.” Like when blacks tell you “you can call me a nigger” means they really accept you no?


John Howard Griffin, Black Like Me:


By dark I was away from the beach area out in the country. Strangely, I began getting rides. Men would pass you in daylight but pick you up after dark.

I must have had a dozen rides that evening. They blear into a nightmare, the one scarcely distinguishable from the other.

It quickly became obvious why they picked me up. All but two picked me up the way they would pick up a pornographic photograph or book – except that this was verbal pornography. With a Negro, they assumed they need give no semblance of self-respect or respectability. The visual element entered into it. In a car at night visibility is reduced. A man will reveal himself in the dark, which gives an illusion of anonymity, more than he will in the bright light. Some were shamelessly open, some shamelessly subtle. All showed morbid curiosity about the sexual life of the Negro, and all had, at base, the same stereotyped image of the Negro as an inexhaustible sex-machine with oversized genitals and a vast store of experiences, immensely varied. They appeared to think that the Negro has done all those “special” things they themselves have never dared to do. They carried the conversation into the depths of depravity. I note these things because it is harrowing to see decent-looking men and boys assume that because a man is black they need show him none of the reticences they would, out of respect, show the most derelict white man. I note them, too, because they differed completely from the “bull sessions” men customarily have among themselves. These latter, no matter how frank, have generally a robust tone that says: “We are men, this is an enjoyable thing to do and to discuss, but it will never impugn the basic respect we give one another; it will never distort our humanity.” In this, the atmosphere, no matter how coarse, has a verve and an essential joviality that casts out morbidity. It implies respect for the persons involved. But all that I could see here were men shorn of respect either for themselves or their companion.

In my grogginess and exhaustion, these conversations became ghoulish. Each time one of them let me out of his car, I hoped the next would spare me his pantings
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