Tag: Blacks in America

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Trump’s Cabinet Picks: “A Thousand Shades of White”?

While speaking on MSNBC last week, Washington Post columnist and desiccated lump of uncooked bagel dough Jennifer Rubin bemoaned the unbearable whiteness of Donald Trump’s nominees and appointees so far. “First, I have to comment, when you put up all of those faces it was a thousand shades of white. Have you noticed that?” (more…)

James Baldwin, who made a career out of being a black bellyacher. (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Bellyaching is an argumentation tactic featuring overblown complaining, typically combining elements of whimpering with indignation. It’s rather like pouting, but often sullener than that. It’s done for a reason, of course. The usual object is to tug at the listener’s heartstrings. With enough repetition, perhaps it will even induce a guilt complex.

Note that bellyaching is not simple passive-aggressiveness, such as a moody girlfriend who says that she’s “Fine!” but clearly means nothing of the sort. (more…)

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Jim Goad has produced a short film to accompany his latest essay, “Eating Watermelon Is Hardly the Worst Thing Black People Do,” given that it’s hardly the worst thing they do in public. (more…)

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

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As we all commemorate National Watermelon Month and finalize plans to celebrate National Watermelon Day on August 3, it has come to my attention that many black people are terrified of eating watermelon in front of whites.

What a strange thing to fear. I’d think it’s better than being tied to a post and whipped for getting uppity with your slave master, but I’ve never been a black slave, so I wouldn’t know. (more…)

1880 cartoon showing the “Solid South” being forced to carry Ulysses S. Grant and the Reconstruction regime at bayonet point.

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Part 3 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 2 here)

Creating & Expanding the Solid South

The end of Reconstruction did not immediately lead to segregation or the disenfranchisement of sub-Saharans in the South or any other part of the country. In 1878, segregation and sub-Saharan disenfranchisement seemed impossible — especially since the South had just barely thrown off a military occupation government. In parts of the South, in fact, sub-Saharans outnumbered whites. South Carolina even had a white minority. (more…)

President Ulysses S. Grant (image source: The White House website)

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Part 2 of 3 (Part 1 here, Part 3 here)

The Fourteenth Amendment, Foreign Policy, & Commander-in-Chief Grant

With the South under the United States Army’s heel, the Radical Republicans turned the Civil Rights Act of 1866 into the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868. This amendment has turned out to be a disaster, mainly due to its birthright citizenship clause, which gives anyone born in the United States citizenship regardless of his parents’ status or his race and national origin. (more…)

Sub-Saharan misrule during Reconstruction.

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Part 1 of 3 (Part 2 here)

On the evening of April 14, 1865, the actor and Confederate sympathizer John Wilkes Booth leaped onto the stage at Ford’s Theater and shouted “Sic semper tyrannis!”, followed by “The South is avenged!” Booth had just fatally shot President Lincoln. He was acting as part of a larger conspiracy to decapitate the Lincoln administration and was the only conspirator to successfully carry out any part of the overall plan — a plot that had been initiated by Booth, not the Confederate government. (more…)

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Jim Goad has produced a short film to accompany his latest essay, “Juneteenth: It’s All So Junetiresome,” on this year’s round of Juneteenth-related violence, and why Juneteenth is growing to be so Junetiresome. (more…)

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Imagine existing as a distinct racial group on a continent for 400 years. Now imagine that your group’s greatest collective “achievement” is being freed from slavery — not rebelling against your slaveowners and freeing yourselves, but walking into freedom atop a red carpet of 600,000 or so bloody cracker corpses that reputedly died in the service of either freeing you or keeping you enslaved. (more…)

Tim Scott (Image source: Wikimedia Commons)

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Black United States Senator Tim Scott placed a $14 million bet against Spencer J. Quinn’s theory about black voting patterns in the United States earlier this month. The former presidential candidate and current vice-presidential hopeful revealed that his Great Opportunity Super PAC will dedicate the above gaudy sum on minority outreach in battleground states during the run-up to the 2024 election. The money will especially go toward canvassing, paid advertising, digital marketing, and research and analytics. Efforts will be made to convince black men in particular to vote for Donald Trump and the Republicans in November. (more…)

Source: The Bakken Museum on Flickr.

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Statistics communicating racial gaps in earnings convey nothing about the depth of racial discrimination in society. Invariably, inequalities in socioeconomic outcomes are an ineluctable consequence of group differences in ability and aptitude. (more…)

Photo courtesy of GoodFon.

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As black violence increasingly plagues American society, even the most milquetoast moderate whites are beginning to concede that something is amiss with blacks. But most are yet unwilling to identify the true source of the problem and instead cite things such as “Democrat-run cities” or “inner-city violence.” Other, more daring moderates argue that “black culture” contributes to the rising violence in our cities and must therefore be addressed. Both viewpoints are wrong. (more…)

Black members of the live studio audience on The Oprah Winfrey Show celebrating news of the O. J. verdict on October 3, 1995.

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I think it was the outcome of the O. J. Simpson trial in October 1995 which first introduced me to tribalism. As a young man I had seen it around me, especially among blacks — but also among Jews and Asians. I knew what it was, and I was fairly well-versed in its literature. (more…)