Every once in a while I like to expose Boo Tribbers to blogs which I read, blogs which may not be as well known or well linked as Daily Kos, Eschaton, Americablog, etc., but which are equally as worthy of your attention. These blogs tend to cover stories that many of the mainstream blogs either ignore or only cover superficially (something I can fault myself for as easily as anyone else). So here’s a round-up of some blogs I’d like to highlight for today, and the stories they have been posting about recently.
Let’s begin with XicanoPwr’s blog, Para Justicia y Libertad!, and a post about the trend among white college kidz to hold “racially themed” parties:
In colleges and universities across the country, white young adults are finding it fashionably acceptable to throw racist theme parties. A few weeks ago, it was reported that another off-campus racist party was thrown; this time, students from the University of Delaware hosted the party.
The photos from the May 5 party featured students from the University of Delaware playing on Latino stereotypes during an off-campus “South of the Border” party. One photo showed students were dressed up as gardeners with nametags reading “Pedro” and “Jose” with a Latino racial slur on the back of the shirt that read “Spic n’ Span Gardening.” The students also wore gardening gloves and carried lawn tools as part of their racist costume. Others photos showed a trio of students in red, white and green shirts with the word “Mexico” on the front and on the back each labeling themselves either as “Hott,” “Spicy” or “Full of Tequila.”
As the father of two biracial children, one of whom will begin college in the Fall, I have to say this is a very worrisome trend. We are starting to see the mainstreaming of white supremacist ideas and behaviors in these racially offensive attitudes, and that cannot be good for the future of our country.
Often these white nationalistic ideas are cloaked with the mantle of Christian fundamentalist beliefs, to make them appear more acceptable and legitimate. Speaking of which, frequent commentators on these very issues include Dave Neiwert and Sara Robinson at Orcinus. Here’s a post by Sara about the possible futures of Right Wing Christianity in the post-Bush era:
(cont.)
They’ve got their own media, schools, arts, resorts, hospitals, nursing homes, malls, and community gathering places. It’s entirely possible to live from cradle to grave without ever having to step outside of this carefully-created Christianist reality sphere. Even if this alternate universe loses it worldly power, it doesn’t mean its residents will need to ever step outside that bubble if they don’t want to. In some form — the same, or slightly diminished — this culture will probably continue to carry on along its own separate path. We should not imagine that just because we no longer see them goofing on the air, they no longer exist. FDR-era liberals made that mistake; we should take pains not to repeat it.
Furthermore, they’ve built shadow organizations within our most powerful national institutions — most notably, Congress, the military, and the legal system. Losing political power will reduce the resources available to this network, hurt recruitment, and weaken its clout; but we can’t afford to assume that the whole thing will just vanish on its own. How much of it remains, again, is up to us — in this case, how effectively we can root out these religious cabals and disentangle them from our public and private institutions. On this front, the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy will last precisely as long as we allow it to.
Also, as noted in the post below, they’ve already raised several million kids in this cultural hothouse, and carefully indoctrinated them to carry on God’s work in spite of Satan’s (er, our) efforts. So we need to ask: Where will these kids be in another ten or 20 years?
A truly disturbing part of our recent history is the extent to which Fundamentalists have been able to indoctrinate millions of children and young adults with their culture of hate, bigotry, apocalyptic visions and the goal of a Reconstructed Christian America. What path will these future fundamentalist leaders choose? Will they keep to the divisive political path of their elders like the late unlamented (by me) Jerry Falwell, or will they reinvent themselves into a more benign version of evangelism, focused on “good works” helping the poor and oppressed, as some current leaders, like Rick Warren seem to be doing. I wish I knew the answer to that. I suspect it depends on future events. If we become faced with another terrorist attack, expect the worst.
Speaking of which, here’s a blog post from Talk to Action about the growing spread of fundamentalist Christian beliefs into the curriculum of ROTC classes at our high school and college campuses:
Last Saturday, I uncovered revisionist US History within the Unit 6 core curriculum for the national Junior ROTC program ; about 1/2 million American high school students each year are unrolled in the JROTC. I was astounded ; a passage paraphrased from the writing of David Barton, the leading historical revisionist claiming that the United States was founded as a “Christian Nation”, has been embedded within a national educational curriculum produced by the Department of Defense and taught, across the nation, to American public high schools students enrolled in Junior ROTC.
How did that happen ? I’m looking into it, but let me say this – those responsible for adding this falsified history to the JROTC curriculum were either complicit, that is to say they did it intentionally, or they were wildly incompetent and did not know the basics of American history. Beyond that, though, I have to wonder ; does no one bother to read what gets taught to hundreds of thousands of American teenagers ? I’m no historian, but I know enough to spot some types of dubious history, and I was apparently the first person to actually notice that the JROTC curriculum contained material from David Barton. If the curriculum had claimed the Sun and the entire heavens rotated around the Earth, repudiating Copernicus, would anyone have noticed that ? I have to wonder.
I can’t say I’m real happy that historical lies by Christian nationalists about the founding of our country are being taught to our future military officers, among others. Is this what we really want? A military increasingly dominated by the most extreme Christian cultists whose first allegiance isn’t to the Constitution or its democratic ideals, but to their own version of a vengeful and violent God?
Indeed, even as some proclaim a swing back toward progressive ideals, we find ourselves evermore confronted with the effects of 30 years of right wingnuts gone wild on our Justice system, especially in it’s animosity toward women, as Echidne of the Snakes reminds us in her analysis of a recent Supreme Court decision eviscerating the right of women to file sexual discrimination lawsuits under federal law:
So you, a possible victim of discrimination, have 180 days to act. That is half a year. I hope you know all the facts within that time. I hope you realize that you might have been discriminated against. On the other hand, if you happen to have discriminated against some folks in the past you can now relax.
Of course this decision was expected in the general sense, of course. The clearing out of all non-wingnuts in the Supreme Court was not something unimportant in the blueprints of the conservatives, and it was not just about abortion. It’s also important to make sure that women and minorities don’t cause a fuss in the labor markets or in the universities. For the proper functioning of the status quo, that is. From the point of view of those who run things. And their mice.
This is why the Democrats failure to filibuster Alito’s nomination was such a significant loss for women, and by extension, to the ideals of freedom and equality upon which our country was supposedly founded. We now have a Supreme Court which will actively look for any excuse to put women in their “proper” (i.e., subservient) place, despite the laws which have been passed over the last half century to ensure gender equality. And by the way, expect the same “rough” judicial treatment of our civil rights laws when future cases come before the Court. Just one more reason establishment Democrats need to be put out to pasture, or replaced with a new, progressive, populist party which will put the interests of people and their rights before the interests of corporations.
Finally, let’s take a gander at this blog, the field negro, one of my recent favorites to read, to see what he has to say about America’s troubled past and how it still influences current relations between the races:
So it’s not like those brothers back then wanted to pick cotton and do all the shit that massa forced them to do. They had that whip to contend with. If you got out of line; CRACK! And I guarantee you that whip was no joke. They had all types of whips, and mother f*****s who knew how to use them. Hell, they had whips made of steel for crying out loud! I can’t even imagine how much that sh** must have hurt. Trust me, if it didn’t, lots of those brothers back then would have said; “f**k you massa” and rolled.
But truth be told, we are still dealing with the whip. Of course now a days the whip takes different forms, but it’s still there and it’s still painful. These days the pain is more psychological than physical, but it’s still painful, and America still uses the whip to keep our asses in line. Whether it’s the IRS whip (Just ask Wesley Snipes, or Ronald Isley), the whip of drug addiction and dependency, the justice whip (we the jury find the defendant…), the credit whip, or the whip of poverty. Just like the whip they used to put an ass whupping on my ancestors, all these whips are still hurting us. And no one is immune from the whip. Colin Powell felt the whip. That’s why his ass went to the U.N. and declared that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, even though he really didn’t believe that shit. “I don’t know Mr. President, maybe we should get more confirmation from the C.I.A. before we declare tha…Ahhh Colin, you still want to keep that position as Secretary of State don’t you? CRACK ! Yeah maybe you are right Mr. President, I will get right on it. ” The CBC is feeling the whip, that’s why their sorry asses won’t give up their insane quest to conduct one of the Democratic debates on FOX NEWS. “I don’t know Mr. Murdoch, we are getting some pressure from liberal groups not to go on your network….Ahhh Bennie, what about all that money we gave you? CRACK! OK Mr. Murdoch, we will try to encourage some other CBC members to endorse the debates.” You think the typical President of one of America’s HBCU’s doesn’t feel the whip every time he goes begging to some accreditation board for his school? What about the black business person who wants a serious line of credit to expand his business. Do you think he doesn’t feel the whip?
Well, hope you enjoyed my little excursion through the blogotopia today (and yes, skippy owns the trademark to that word). If you have the time, check out the blogs I’ve highlighted. Like me, you might find their perspectives — well — enlightening.
