Watching Django Unchained on Martin Luther King Jr. Day With a Bunch of High White Hipsters is not a Good Experience

On Monday, I watched the Inauguration. I then decided to celebrate by watching Django Unchained, Gangster Squad, and Haunted House. Please do not ask me for the logic of how the latter fit into my viewing choices. I am practical. As the movie Jackie Brown taught us, sometimes you see a movie that starts soon and looks good...or not.

I have commented quite a bit about Tarantino's Django Unchained. It is far from being a perfect film. Nevertheless, Django is one of the most important movies about post civil rights America in recent memory. There still remains much to be said about it. On repeated viewings the movie only improves for me, and the beauty of its little moments and touches becomes even more apparent.

For example, the names of the characters hold a great deal of meaning: one of the caricaturized "poor white trash" on Calvin Candie's plantation is named "Stonecipher" which I take to mean "dumb as a rock." Dr. Schultz has the same last name as Paula Schultz in Kill Bill Volume 2. Given Tarantino's film universe, one would have to assume that the characters are somehow related to one another.

The overseer about to whip a slave on Big Daddy's plantation is reciting verses from the Bible while he, apparently not a master of subtlety, has pages from the Bible pinned to his shirt. Sam Jackson's performance as Stephen is even more potent on a second, third, or fourth viewing. Leo DiCaprio is revealed to be a pathetic villain; Sam Jackson is the true evil, one whose conflict with Jamie Foxx is foreshadowed when the latter tells us how a "black slaver" is lower than the "head house nigger."

Moreover, Sam Jackson's character is a tragic figure who chose to get in bed with White Power in order to navigate a hellish and unfair world. Stephen made a series of Faustian bargains with the Racial State and is bound to them without apology or regret. His father, whose skull was hammered by Candy at the dinner table, made the same bargains too.

Ultimately, Django is not a slave liberator or freedom fighter. He only cares about freeing his wife. Django is also a superhero which is why all of the other black characters are depicted as two dimensional figures who are either 1) complicit with the system or 2) broken by it, and thus rendered silent.

I was a bit tin-eared towards some folks who were a bit more critical of Django Unchained than I was upon its debut a few weeks ago. I apologize for that move.

Sometimes you study a thing too long and you become numb to how certain concepts play out in the real world.

In Cultural Studies, we often talk about the relationship between the audience, the creator of a given text (e.g. films, books, movies, literature, etc.) and/or those who sell or "circulate" it (the corporations, film companies, radio and TV stations) and the object of study itself.

There, we are trying to get at how a public's experiences with a given type of popular culture are situated in society and reflect relationships of power, while also signalling to how audiences' experiences, and the circumstances of how a given cultural text was created, should be taken into account for purposes of analysis and critical inquiry.

Movies teach us how to watch them. Audiences must "buy into" a film for its narrative to "work."

When I first saw Django Unchained, I was fortunate to be with an enthusiastic yet respectful audience. With a few exceptions, all of the people in that screening understood the sensitive nature of the material being presented by Tarantino. They balanced humor with pathos and nervous insecurity at the appropriateness of laughing at a movie about black slavery.

The audience quickly picked up on those cues, and thus became complicit with the narrative and ideology that Tarantino was presenting.

Last night, I saw the film while sitting behind a group of four self-consciously aware and intentionally ironic white hipsters...with their obligatory Asian friend in tow for purposes of a racial quota and politically correct inclusivity.

If this group laughed at everything without shame I would give them a pass. It is the fact that they were quiet during certain scenes such as the slave auction in Mississippi, the feeding of a slave to dogs, or Broomhilda's whipping and torture--which signaled some awareness and choice on their part--and then proceeded to laugh mightily (and immediately in a forced way) at every mention of the word "nigger" which gave me pause.

It was also clear that said group had seen the movie several times as they recited the lines verbatim. Tarantino is imminently quotable. I get that fact. I enjoy his work because of his gift for dialogue.

However, seeing a bunch of white hipsters, with their Asian compadre in tow as racial cover, using a movie about black slavery as the fodder for a joke, is deeply and profoundly unsettling to me as both a Black Pragmatist, and as someone with an appreciation for American history.

Django Unchained is not Snakes on a Plane (and yes, I did see the latter, intoxicated, drinking from a flask while yelling Cobra la la la la at the screen).

In total, I am deeply worried that Django Unchained will, for a whole generation of youth, become the equivalent of The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

In the most extreme versions of populism, audiences repurpose popular culture in ways that go against the attentions of the creators, and which subvert the political and social meaning of the text as originally offered.

As such, I pray and hope that there will not be Django Unchained parties at frat houses, hipster bars, lounges, and other such spaces come this Halloween. I know that I will be disappointed. I am all for the carnivalesque and the transgressive. While it is a dark comedy, to my eyes Django Unchained does not lend itself to such appropriations.

Am I being too sensitive? Will Django Unchained just become another excuse for white hipsters and others to say nigger with impunity, joy, and a cultivated sense of ahistoricism that removes any sense of responsibility or consequences for their speech? Is Django that different from much of commercial hip hop in that regard?

Cornel West is Personally Offended that President Obama Used Martin Luther King Jr.'s Bible at the Inauguration

Cornel keeps shanking Obama in the gut whenever the opportunity presents itself. This just hurts to watch.

At this point it is pretty clear that Cornel West is permanently off of the Obama's Christmas card list. Brother West is also not going to be getting a personal invite to any of the inaugural balls or other related events. I do wonder, if President Obama had it to do all over again those few years ago, would he have issued Cornel a personal invite for the first inauguration in 2008?

At this point all of the bad blood is just so much piling on and could have easily been prevented by a simple gesture.

In the abstract, Brother West is correct in how many of Obama's policies are problematic and wanting when viewed from a radically humanistic, Black Prophetic, social justice perspective. However, are black "radicals" (to the degree that Cornel is one given his full professorship and lucrative role as a public intellectual) being fair and reasonable in assessing Barack Obama as the President of the United States, a man who by definition is part of Power as opposed to being outside of it?

There is so much sound and fury from some on the Black Left towards President Barack Obama. Is there anything he can do to silence them? What would make them happy while still allowing Obama to stay in office as president?

I am all for Black Freedom Dreams. If we and our allies did not dream, then Jim and Jane Crow, and the Southern Slaveocracy would not have been brought down. I worry that those Black Freedom Dreams have left too many folks living in a haze, unable to grapple with the waking realities that are politics in the real world. Obama is firmly grounded in the pragmatic politics of compromise and the now: he is blessed and cursed because of that temperament.

Is Martin Luther King Jr. Smiling Down on President Obama's Second Inauguration?

The coincidence of timing between President Obama's second inauguration, 50 years having passed since the March on Washington, Dr. King's Holiday, and the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation is like a type of political catnip or intoxicant that the pundit classes--and those others interested in American history, culture, and life--cannot resist.

Such an alignment of dates could portend something "magical" and inspirational for the President's second term. Alternatively, perhaps Obama's second inauguration, and the alignment of dates which could suggest a radical breaking from standing history and the shadow of the colorline, is simply an easy lede for a story written under deadline.

Whatever the motivation or source, many folks, like those standing outside at the National Mall on Monday, talking in barbershops and hair salons, writing online, or whose editorials will appear on TV, radio, or in traditional print media, are likely asking "what would Martin Luther King Jr. think of President Obama's second inauguration?"

We can try to divine the wishes and thoughts of the departed. Some folks will pretend that they are clairvoyants, at a seance, and can actually hear Brother Dr. King's words and wishes in an act of paranormal and fantastical interpretation.

I am not able to channel the late Dr. King's wisdom about events that occurred more than four decades after his murder. However, we can look to some of his actual wisdom, cautionary words, and insights into the country which he died to improve and protect.

On poverty and war Dr. King famously said:

"(I)n the ghettoes of the North over the last three years -- especially the last three summers, (a)s I have walked among the desperate, rejected, and angry young men, I have told them that Molotov cocktails and rifles would not solve their problems. I have tried to offer them my deepest compassion while maintaining my conviction that social change comes most meaningfully through nonviolent action. 

But they ask -- and rightly so -- 'what about Vietnam?' They ask if our own nation wasn't using massive doses of violence to solve its problems, to bring about the changes it wanted. Their questions hit home, and I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government. For the sake of those boys, for the sake of this government, for the sake of the hundreds of thousands trembling under our violence, I cannot be silent."

Dr. King also astutely connected the price of the military industrial complex and American imperialism abroad to a broken infrastructure at home:

"There is at the outset a very obvious and almost facile connection between the war in Vietnam and the struggle I, and others, have been waging in America. A few years ago there was a shining moment in that struggle. It seemed as if there was a real promise of hope for the poor -- both black and white -- through the poverty program. There were experiments, hopes, new beginnings. Then came the buildup in Vietnam, and I watched this program broken and eviscerated, as if it were some idle political plaything of a society gone mad on war, and I knew that America would never invest the necessary funds or energies in rehabilitation of its poor so long as adventures like Vietnam continued to draw men and skills and money like some demonic destructive suction tube. So, I was increasingly compelled to see the war as an enemy of the poor and to attack it as such."

Or race, inequality, and reparations Dr. King observed:

But 100 years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we've come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. 

In a sense we've come to our nation's capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men - yes, black men as well as white men - would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. 

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked 'insufficient funds.'
But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation.

No one could offer those truth-telling statements and be elected President. This is especially true given the status of Black Americans as contingent citizens whose inalienable rights are forever suspect: no Black American with serious desires to be President (or any other high office), could ever utter such words, or give comfort to similar thoughts in public (or even in private) and be successful.

President Obama is just a man. He is not a black superhero. President Obama is a President who happens to be black. He is not a Black President. President Obama is not the living embodiment of Dr. King or Brother Malcolm.

He is not our shining black manhood as deftly spoken to by Ossie Davis during his funereal oratory for Malcolm X:



Some of you knew this. Others had to be told of its truth.

Barack Obama has demonstrated the veracity of a fundamental belief held by those who study the American Presidency: he is bounded by precedent and the decisions made by those who came before him; Obama will leverage those said happenings to the degree possible in order to advance his agenda; he will not concede power or the expanded understanding of what the office allows he or she who is President to do. And yes, that includes the unitary executive, the imperial presidency, drone strikes, and kill lists.

As he is sworn in a second time, President Obama is a paradox of sorts. He is a President who happens to be black who was reelected because of the overwhelming support of black and brown voters. The (twice) arrival of Barack Obama also heralds the end of Black Politics.

I am unsure if the the ways in which President Barack Obama navigates the political realities of post civil rights era America, with its insincere colorblindness, in the face of vicious and racist opposition by conservatives, is evidence of his genius (or not). As a supporter of Barack Obama, I lean towards the affirmative. Obama is playing a game that is not designed for a man who looks like him; somehow he plays it pretty damn well...whatever you/we/us think of the policy outcomes.

I have no doubt however, that Obama is very mindful of his legacy as the country's first black president, feels deeply beholden to the ancestors and the Black Freedom Struggle, and how the first draft of history will judge his tenure.

Realpolitik can be cruel in its honest truths. With few exceptions, outsiders and visionaries do not become President of the United States of America. The United States is an empire. Men like Martin Luther King Jr., leaders who are killed because they speak truth to Power, are not elected President of the United States of America.

Consequently, it is high time that folks stop using Brother King as a measuring stick for Barack Obama. They were playing very different games; therefore they should be held to very different standards of leadership. There is only one Brother Doctor King. There is only one Barack Obama. They are very different from one another. Both are first ballot hall of fame entries into The Pantheon of Black Exceptionalism and Greatness: deny that fact at your own peril. It is a far better use of one's energies to meditate on the consequences of Obama's elevation to a leading figure in the Black Freedom Struggle, than to deny if said conclusion will come to pass.

I am not suggesting moral cowardice or retreat by Obama's critics, and Progressives, especially. Rather, I would hope that President Barack Obama is judged by the standards of the office, pushed forward by his base to be like Johnson or FDR--or at the very least made to be more accountable to the people and the Common Good, than to the public opinion polls, the financiers, banksters, and his chances of reelection.

Obama is and has never been a "runaway slave." That temperament is not his way. However, President Obama is adept at playing 3 dimensional Star Trek chess. By leveraging this talent he can win a few victories for regular folks on both sides of the colorline. Incrementalism can be a virtue.

Would Dr. King approve? I am unsure. You tell me.

Forget the Mayan Prophecy, Obama's Second Inauguration is a Fourfold Cross Rip, the Greatest Psychic Event Since the Philadelphia Negro Mass Turbulence of 1947

The Mayan Prophecy which was thought to herald the end of all things was proven to be a lie. The masses were duped. Those who understand the true nature of the universe knew that a truly great event, one which would harness energies heretofore never before witnessed in all of human existence, was in fact set to occur at a later time.

Ours is a world of magic--what are really energies and fantastical forces which laypeople hold little understanding of. Any technology sufficiently advanced, or science not fully understood, will be mistaken for it.

For those of us who are seers, and have studied the True Way, we knew that Barack Obama's second inauguration would be the True Happening.

Consider the following.

The universe is full of dark matter which we cannot see through normal means. The unified field theory promises to give humankind insight into the fundamental forces of material existence: once discovered we will then be able to see the mind of God at work.

Ghosts are just psychic impressions left behind by the departed. ESP is an ability to tap into the electromagnetic energy that connects all of shared consciousness.

That presence which you sense, that figure in the corner of your eye, lingering just outside of your peripheral vision, is a shadow person from another dimension. You are his "ghost." He is yours.

There are a multitude of worlds and parallel realities in the multiverse. They can overlap and intersect with one another.

Barack Obama's second inauguration coincides with the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation and the holiday honoring the elder god Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr.. Obama's inauguration is also the 50th anniversary of the great March on Washington. There is great power in this alignment of dates.

Monday will be a day when the energies of the Black Freedom Struggle coalesce and doors are opened across time and space; on that day the normal rules governing this plane of physical existence will be made more pliable.

Although the rules governing this reality cannot be broken, they can be bent during such a moment...for those of us who know how to do so.

The Black Freedom Struggle and the experiences of black folks in the United States (and the West) is surreal. It is an example of "racecraft" in practice.

Black folks are, what Amiri Baraka famously described as, a "blues people." Given black folks' capacity to achieve in the face of impossible odds, and in a situation which is the best/worst of speculative fiction made real, how can we not be magical both by our very nature and also as a result of circumstance?

As I did during the Niggaro Universe incident, I have consulted with starred physicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson about how to harness the energies of the Emancipation Proclamation's Anniversary, Brother King's legacy of struggle and memory, and the second inauguration of Barack Obama, the United States' first black President.

Dr, deGrasse has instructed me as to the optimal moment on Monday to reach across the divides of space and time, and to send forth your questions to those who are of the Black Freedom Struggle, of the past-future-present, in this dimension, as well as others.

I now need a space to channel these energies. My family memory has provided me the necessary technology.

My great great grandmother was an Obeah woman. As learned through lessons passed down from parent to child, I have constructed a circle of copper and gold large enough to stand in, coated it with hot sauce and bacon grease, put James Brown on in the background, and placed pictures of Brothers Malcolm and Martin, Sisters Tubman and Sojourner Truth, in the four cardinal directions of the circle's perimeter.

I have prepared my sandalwood incense. I have also placed a pot of collards and black eyed peas on the stove. I have put on my vestments as taught to us by the "Black Moses" Mr. Isaac Hayes.

I am now ready to serve as a conduit for your questions come this Monday. Think carefully, as each person is only allowed one set of inquiries.

Who would you like me to summon?

What would you ask them?

What request do you have of them?

And never forget that when dealing with such energies that there is always a price, a cost that will be assessed at some later date. Are you prepared for that responsibility?

Saturday Housekeeping: Disqus and a New Look for WARN

A quick update for the weekend.

You may have noticed a new color scheme and header here on WARN. I believe in making periodic changes and moving things forward. Updating the visuals and the colors is part of that process. The changes are mostly aesthetic, but I have done a few things more substantive as well.

Most importantly, I have finally added Disqus as the tool for moderating comments here on WARN. It is much more robust and flexible than the existing Blogger software. All of the old comments will show up in about 24 hours after they have been imported--which is why I chose to make that change over the weekend have been imported.

For now, I will still leave the system open for readers who would like to make anonymous comments without registering with Disqus. I may change that in the future, but for now I would like to give folks the chance to get used to using Disqus on the site and then migrating away from the anonymous feature in the near future.

My hope is that Disqus will encourage more readers to comment. It will also give me the tools to better moderate in such a way as to keep our conversations moving forward in a productive manner.

I have also added a stand-alone section where you can find links to selected media appearances and other related information on the sidebar. Visitors to WARN have asked for that feature; it was overdue; thus, I implemented it...finally.

I am also going to be taking reader submissions for the header. The details are here. If any of you are photographers, graphic artists, or the like do consider sending in an original image which you think captures the spirit of the "We" in "We Are Respectable Negroes."

If you have any thoughts or suggestions on the new look do send them in. The next step is moving the site to a different url. I will be taking that step in the next few weeks and the site will be configured to auto-direct itself forward. The good folks who come to WARN should not notice any real difference in how they find the site.

Independence, USA: What Does Glenn Beck Have in Common With the United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors and Tama-Re?

Outsider communities are a rich and deep part of the American cultural and political tradition.

Glenn Beck is going to start his own John Galtian live action role playing amusing park living community called "Independence, USA." It is fitting that Glenn Beck is imitating Walt Disney. Both believe(d) in protecting the white nuclear family, and creating a fictive world of heterosexual, normalized whiteness, where no Others need to intrude.

Some of his fellow libertarians have played too many hours of the videogame Bioshock and are going to establish their own floating city in the Pacific Ocean. Apparently, these libertarian Otaku did not realize that Bioshock is a cautionary tale--as opposed to one that is inspirational.

Like Jim Jones, Beck and his libertarian Utopian-isolationists are as American as apple pie.

Although Glenn Beck is a reactionary white conservative who believes that Barack Obama hates white people, and wants to "oppress" them, fate is a trickster (as she always is). As such, Glenn Beck has a "brother from another mother" on the other side of the color line.

Dr. Malachi Z. York was a con man and black charismatic religious figure, who with hundreds of followers, established an amusement park and black separatist futurist religious community during the 1990s called Tama-re in Georgia.

Glenn Beck's "Independence, USA" will be a model of idealized John Galtian Ayn Randian libertarianism. There, untenable political theories as offered up in piss poor works of literature will become real for its visitors and residents:

Glenn believes that he can bring the heart and the spirit of Walt’s early Disneyland ideas into reality. Independence, USA wouldn’t be about rides and merchandise, but would be about community and freedom. The Marketplace would be a place where craftmen and artisan could open and run real small businesses and stores. The owners and tradesmen could hold apprenticeships and teach young people the skills and entrepreneurial spirit that has been lost in today’s entitlement state.

There would also be an Media Center, where Glenn’s production company would film television, movies, documentaries, and more. Glenn hoped to include scripted television that would challenge viewers without resorting to a loss of human decency. He also said it would be a place where aspiring journalists would learn how to be great reporters. 

Across the lake, there would be a church modeled after The Alamo which would act as a multi-denominational mission center. The town will also have a working ranch where visitors can learn how to farm and work the land.

Independence would also be home to a Research and Development center where people would come to learn, innovate, educate, and create. There would be a theme park for people to recharge and have fun with their families. 

People would also have the option to live in Independence, with a residential area where people of different incomes could all come together and be neighbors.

Let's compare Glenn Beck's "Independence, USA" with Dr. York's Nuwaubian community Tama-re:

In 1993, York purchased a 476 acre game ranch in Eatonton, Georgia. Approximately 400 followers moved to Georgia with York. The group was once again renamed, The United Nuwaubian Nation of Moors. This group claimed to be part of a Native-American tribe from Georgia called the Yamassee.  

The Nuwaubians claim that they are ancestors of Egyptians who migrated from the Nile Valley to the Georgia countryside prior to the continental drift that separated the continents. These Egyptian migrants came known to be the Yamassee Native Americans. The Nuwaubians have attempted to use their ancestoral lineage to the Yamassee as a basis for obtaining sovereignty from the United States government. 

The name of the Nuwaubians home is Tama-re, or the "Egypt of the West." At the entrance of Tama-re there is a large sign that recognizes the Nuwaubians as a fraternity, Lodge 19 of the Ancient Mystic Order of Melchizedek. Armed guards stand at the entrance to Tama-re. Approximately 100 Nuwaubians live within 15 double-wide trailers within this complex...  

At this current complex the Nuwaubians have constructed an Egytian-style village with two pyramids, obelisks, and statues of Egyptian leaders. The two pyramids are distinct in appearance and in usage. There is a gold pyramid that serves as a trade center. Within this pyramid one can find a bookstore and a clothing store. The other pyramid is painted black with colorful Egyptian symbols painted on the outside. This structure serves as a church. Within the church, loudspeakers play Egyptian chants 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

Ultimately, are Dr. York's teachings and those of the Nuwaubians that different from those of Glenn Beck, if not in a resonance of details, but in fantastical thinking?

In fact, nearly every school of "alternative" information popular in the U.S. since the late 60s is represented in York’s hefty output.  

His patchwork approach is not just applied to graphics. A partial list, from my notes, of places I’d encountered Nuwaubian notions before includes Chariots of the Gods and the Rael’s embellishments on that book, conspiracy lit, UFO lit, the human potential movement, Buddhism and new-age, astrology, theosophy and Blavatsky, Leonard Jeffries and other Afrocentrics, Cayce, LaRouche, alternative medicine, self-help lit, Satanism, the Atkins diet, numerology and yoga.  

Many of these York mentions by name. There are also extensive discourses on the Torah, Gospels and Koran, as well as on Rastafarianism, the Nation of Islam and the Five Percent Nation.

Paranoia is paranoia. Cults of personality are very similar across time, cultures, communities, religion, race, and gender. Glenn Beck is a former(?) drug addict, radio shock jock wannabe Howard Stern imitator, faux historian propagandist, snake oil salesman and carnival barker. Malachi York was playing the same game, just with different politics, all the while working towards the same end goal--personal enrichment and power.

The latter was/is far less dangerous and relatively harmless than the former.

Ultimately, who would think that a white populist conservative Mormon who believes in a herrenvolk America, one which is a Utopian playground for Whiteness, unfettered capitalism, and hyper-conservatism, would have so much in common with a black charismatic leader, futurist, and refined street hustler.

I guess a love of power and real estate makes for strange bedfellows. I do so very much love it when a plan comes together. Indeed, Crom mocks us all, and does so with one hell of a sense of humor.

According to Fox News Discussing White Privilege with High School Students is Apparently "Indoctrination" and "Anti-White"

At least they didn't quote Brother Doctor Martin Luther King Jr. out of context.

Schools are one of the primary places where political socialization takes place in a given society. They are indoctrination centers that reproduce the values of a culture. Most folks do not want to think of "education" in that way.

In "post racial" America this poses a dilemma: do you teach young people the truth about this country's history and the semi-permanence of the colorline? As an educator, do you discuss how American society is structured hierarchically and where race, class, and gender over-determine life outcomes?

It would seem that if you are a teacher at Delavan-Darien High School in Wisconsin, you should not dare to broach such questions.

Over the last few decades, there has been an Orwellian turn in American education. It extends from grade school to the university level.

What counts as educational content is being dictated by the logic of the capitalist marketplace, teachers are being subjected to onerous surveillance and harassment, intellectual freedom is being made subject to the political aims of outside actors, and the value of teachers is being undermined by destroying public unions, eliminating tenure, and forcing college professors into a permanent contingent labor force.

In total, the response to Delavan-Darien High School's course "American Diversity" is indicative of the impact of hyper-conservatism on public schools. Ultimately, the students (and by extension all of us) lose because they are not being given the critical thinking tools to be active, reflective, and engaged citizens.

Ideally, any controversy over teaching students about an obvious fact--such as how "race matters" in American society--should be dismissed as silliness.

Glenn Beck and David Barton Channel Harry Dresden and Do Magic With History: Did You Know That Kids With Guns Can Stop School Shootings?

Glenn Beck's resident "historian" David Barton is a professional liar. I used to recoil at Beck and Barton's Right-wing perpetual motion alternate reality machine until I realize that they were speaking to the already converted--and thus lost. Those on the Right who live in Beck and Fox News' alternate reality echo chamber have already bought into their world system.

Moreover, because their audience already believes that faith trumps science, global warming is a fiction, tax cuts pay for themselves, and that people rode on the tops of dinosaurs several thousands years ago, the rule of diminishing returns applies: Beck and company are speaking to the converted, lost souls, possessed of anti-intellectualism and conspiranoid thinking, who cannot otherwise be saved.

Glenn Beck is piling intellectual feces on top of a preexisting pile of intellectual feces. Said pile of political scatology will go until said pile collapses. Scant few new folks are likely going coming to the party at that point...I hope.

However, this does not make Glenn Beck and the other Right-wing propagandists any less dangerous. Glenn Beck's dream machine would be admired by Goebbels, Stalin, or Mao. Orwell would also shake his head in frightened admiration.

Beck's ability to create an alternate reality for his followers, one that is internally consistent (in the loosest sense of the word), and where he gets paid to offer up his version of the "truth" is a religion.

It is lucrative; it is based on faith as said process is nothing if not a capacity to believe in that which cannot be proven by appeals to empiricism or rational thought. Faith cannot be disproven by ordinary means.

Thus, the truth is what Glenn Beck, and the High Archons of the Right--Limbaugh, O'Reilly, and Hannity--tell their mouth-breathing troglodytes it is. Epistemic closure is one hell of a drug.

As seen in the above clip with Glenn Beck, David Barton helps to turn the con.

Barton pretends to be a "historian." He offers up the certainty that comes with intellectual authority to an audience which both dismisses truth seeking and is suspicious of the academy and professional scholars. Yet, they believe Barton because he provides "proof" for their preconceived beliefs.

Barton's gimmick is to make grand claims, and then to explain how reasonable public policy can be generalized from his specious observations about the historical record. Even if Barton were telling the truth about a made for TV scenario where kids in 19th century America stare down a potential murderer with their sidearms in a schoolhouse that is a mix of Dirty Harry and Little House on the Prairie, said example is insufficient evidence for making informed arguments about what gun control policy in 21st century America should look like.

I am transparent. Whatever I may be, I am a ghetto nerd. Because of that core part of my personhood, I draw inspiration from a range of sources. As such, I am also a fan of the mystery-fantasy series The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher. His stories about Chicago, and the magical world which exists parallel (and at times intersecting with our own), is just so very wonderful and creative: I would take Harry Dresden over Harry Potter any day of the week.

Ultimately, great fiction should tell us something about the "real" world. Butcher does not fail in that regard.

I was rereading his book Dead Beat when I came upon this passage about fairies (what Jim Butcher calls "The Fae") and immediately thought about Glenn Beck and his fellow Right-wing propagandists:

"You know, wizard, that I may speak no word that is untrue. Thus is my word given to you."

I eyed her wearily. It was true that the high Sidhe could not speak words that were untrue--but that wasn't the same thing as telling the truth. Most of the Sidhe I had met were past masters of the art of deception, speaking in allusions and riddles and inferences that would undermine the necessary honesty of their words so thoroughly that they might be much stronger lies than if they had simply spoken a direct falsehood. Trusting the word of one of the Sidhe was an enterprise best undertaken with extraordinary caution and exacting care. If I had any choice in the matter, I would avoid it.

Is this not an apt description of Glenn Beck's forked tongue and the power he holds over his listeners and viewers?

Thus, my worries and questions.

What can reasonable, sensible, reflective folks who care about the Common Good do when confronted by the power of willful liars like Glenn Beck and David Barton? Is the only option available to sensible and intelligent folks, when faced with such wickedness, to lie better than Glenn Beck and his lot? To construct our own alternative knowledge systems? How does one beat a master liar who believes his own deceptions?

A Theory of Obama Cinema? "Killing Them Softly" is the Defining Movie for the Age of Obama

I am suspicious of unifying theories which try to explain the relationship between popular culture and politics. However, A.O. Scott's piece in the New York Times on the defining Hollywood films of the Obama era is pretty compelling:

Last year in The New York Review of Books the critic J. Hoberman wondered when we would see an “Obama-inflected Hollywood cinema.” “The longing for Obama (or an Obama),” he wrote, “can be found in two prescient 2008 movies,” citing “Wall-E” and “Milk” as releases about creative community organizers, with Harvey Milk also a political symbol of hope. It may be too soon to identify an Obama Cinema, but the president’s second inauguration seems like an appropriate time to try.

Film is one of the sites where societies negotiate meaning, develop and challenge their own mythologies, and express the hopes, anxieties, and feelings of the collective subconscious. Films talk to us, talk to each other, all the while revealing the "spirit of the age." In total, popular culture is an informal type of public opinion, a barometer for the attitudes of a given society.

Obama's election in 2004 was supposed to usher in postracial America. It did not. Hope and change was met by the twin realities of a coordinated assault on the legitimacy of the country's first black President, as well as how practical governance is an exercise in realpolitik. As such, hope and change had to be surrendered to practical realities--here Obama's right-leaning centrism was greeted by upset on the part of Progressives, and recast as treason and Socialist-Communist-anti-white tyranny by Conservatives.

How do the Hollywood movies made in the Age of Obama reflect these dynamics?

Ten Things to Keep in Mind When Talking About How White Men are a "Problem" in the Age of Obama

We are finally talking in an explicit way about what it means to be white (and male) in America. 

Some of these conversations have been necessitated by the country's demographic changes. 

The election of Barack Obama (twice), and the Republican Party's deep devotion to the politics of white racial resentment have also helped to force a national conversation about the meaning of Whiteness.

And as I and others have talked about in great detail, the recent murder sprees in Newtown and Aurora, where young white men have killed people by the dozens, have demanded that we discuss the relationship(s) between white masculinity, gun culture, and violence.

Many white folks have not responded well to these types of conversations.

Despite the opposition and shrill voices, the flurry of discussions online and in the mainstream media about the meaning of Whiteness in the Age of Obama is a positive development.

What was once an inside game of Left leaning cultural critics, scholars, and social justice types is now more fashionable and mainstream. As such, a chorus of voices are joining the conversation.

Many of these new voices are tempted, quite naturally, to call out the deleterious impact of Whiteness and White elites on America (slavery; Jim and Jane Crow; racial inequality; labor market and housing discrimination; wealth inequality; genocide against First Nations people; the Great Recession caused by an almost exclusively white financier and banking class), as well as the world (Colonialism and Imperialism; environmental destruction; two World Wars).

These moves are exhilarating. Yet, they often lack precision, a thinking through of end goals, and a consideration of the long plan going forward.

After "Django Unchained" Will There be a Remake of "The Black Klansman?"

This sounds like one of my post-coitus race conscious chats after riding Space Mountain across the colorline. And I thought I was original? Damn me my hubris.

I learn something new everyday. I was reading Orgtheory when I came across the above gem of a movie mentioned in the comments about the (recent) and oft discussed movie Django Unchained.

From what I can discern, The Black Klansman is about a black guy that can sort of pass, and looks like some of my cousins, who then infiltrates the Ku Klux Klan, after they kill his daughter, in order to bring them down.

This brother is no Walter Francis White; however, he is very didactic and entertaining.

Whatever one thinks of Tarantino's body of work, he will be acknowledged for disrupting how mainstream audiences and critics view B-movies--those late night gems, drive in classics, and other guilty pleasure genre flicks--that were thrown on to the dustbin of film history before he and others in the postmodern turn elevated them to the level of "respectable" films.

It is true that popular culture is ephemeral and disposable. I have been long sympathetic to Adorno's concerns about how popular culture advances the agenda of Power and elites by offering up a space for the masses to self-medicate by projecting their dreams, anxieties, and hopes onto cultural objects, as they make themselves whole through consumerism.

Nevertheless, there remains something to be said about populism, and how regular folks repurpose popular culture for their own ends.

Popular movies can make money, be distributed through the Hollywood system, and still offer some type of political comment and critique. It is just harder for these types of movies to do so.

Now, we have Django Unchained. In the near future, I am hoping for a remake of The Black Klansman.

Will Lee Marvin's The Klansman be showing up again as well? And who would star in the movie if you were doing the casting?

Are there any B-movie classics that you think are worthy of being reinvented for the Age of Obama and 21st century audiences?

Taking on the Silly Talk from the Gun Right: A Modern Historian Debunks and Exposes the "Hitler was Pro-Gun Control" Mythology"

It is routine that references to Hitler and Stalin are used by many on the Right when questions about gun control are raised in the United States. It is particularly noteworthy that allusions to two of the greatest killers and tyrants of the 20th century are commonly used to criticize the country's first black president.

Hitler was a racial fascist. Obama is a black man who happens to be President, and whose very existence is terrifying to conservatives and the White Right because of their yearning for a return to a herrenvolk "real America." The Right's efforts to tie the two figures together is no accident: it plays on fears about "white oppression" while also legitimating the Right-wing media's eliminationist rhetoric in the Age of Obama.

The masses are asses--for the most part. The use of Hitler and Stalin are ways of triggering deep anxieties and fears about universal historical villains in order to make a point about basic and quotidian matters of public policy.

Moreover, the Right-wing media are masters of the politics of emotion, creating alternate realities, and alternative knowledge systems. For example, see the popularity of a piss poor piece of "research" such as the book Liberal Fascism or the work of pseudo historian David Barton.

One of our guest bloggers, the one and only Werner Herzog's Bear (who also happens to be an expert on 20th century Germany) has kindly offered up a great essay exposing the silly talk and foolishness surrounding the claim that Hitler was "pro-gun control," as well as the Gun Right's maniac anti-historicism and anti-intellectualism, more generally.
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Now that gun control is back on the national agenda, the Hitler metaphors are flying fast and furious again. They were last lobbed about during the heady days of the Tea Party's ascendance and its attendant crusade against universal health care. Back then the pea-brained likes of Louie Gohmert and Jim DeMint warned of a path to fascism, now it's the NRA and Drudge Report likening gun control to Nazism.

As someone who has spent years studying modern German history, and has the degrees to prove it, I feel it is my special duty to debunk this garbage. Lying behind both the Tea Party and gun proliferators' use of Hitler is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and historical context of the Third Reich. The misconceptions about that murderous regime are pretty much accepted in mainstream American life, and the Right has done an able job of exploiting them.

In our day the Nazis have been completely dishistoricized, turned into stand-ins for remorseless evil. There is no more effective way to label your political opponents bad and dangerous than by making such comparisons. Most Americans seem to think that Hitler was some kind of evil genius, that his followers were mindless automatons, and that his whole regime was one man's psychopathic power-trip.

This cartoon-villain understanding of the Hitler regime, reinforced in countless films like Inglorious Basterds and Raiders of the Lost Ark, makes it easy for the public to be swayed by the NRA's Hollywood scenario. In their counter-narrative, ordinary Germans (and German Jews in particular) could have grabbed their guns and brought down the Third Reich, if only those guns hadn't been taken from them.

This view of history is idiotic and deluded at best.

The esteemed historian Omer Bartov, in a recent Salon article, makes it clear that even if Hitler's opponents had guns, it would not have changed a thing: “Just imagine the Jews of Germany exercising the right to bear arms and fighting the SA, SS and the Wehrmacht. The [Russian] Red Army lost 7 million men fighting the Wehrmacht, despite its tanks and planes and artillery. The Jews with pistols and shotguns would have done better?”

The people who bring up these misguided Hollywood scenarios are also likely ignorant of how the Nazi state treated insurgents. Guerilla attacks on German troops on the Eastern Front often resulted in reprisal executions that killed hundreds for every German slain. 

The conspirators against Hitler in the failed 1944 plot on his life ended up being horrifically tortured and killed, their agonies filmed for the Fuehrer's amusement. Hitler responded to the assassination of German diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris at the hands of Herschel Grynszpan in 1938 by unleashing the horrific Night of Broken Glass as vengeance. 

In the improbable scenario of German Jews (who were a very small part of the population) arming themselves and shooting Nazis, it only would have meant much worse visited upon the Jewish population.

One especially major problem with the pro-gun use of the Nazis as a cautionary tale is usually the case with other would-be invokers of the Third Reich. Namely, they just take things completely out of context, that context being the Nazi ideology of racist nationalism. Just as communism was the philosophy behind the Soviet Union, the Third Reich was a racial state governed by the principles of racialized nationalism. 

For example, abortion rights foes like to invoke Hitler as a supporter of abortion because the Nazi state pushed "non-Aryan" and disabled women to terminate their pregnancies. However, abortions were banned for Aryans, a change from the more liberal laws of the preceding Weimar Republic. (In this light the Nazis were more anti than pro abortion.) Anyone who tries to analogize about Nazi Germany without taking its ideological basis into consideration will inevitably go wrong.

Context greatly illuminates the issue of gun control in Nazi Germany. As the Salon article notes, Germany's 1938 laws on firearms were actually less restrictive than those of the Weimar government, which had enacted strict gun control at a time when armed militias threatened the stability of the nation after World War I. They were only more restrictive for Jews and other targets of Nazi oppression. 

 To contextualize further, German laws at the time restricted Jews in all kinds of ways, banning them from universities and other public places, and restricting them from engaging in most professions while effectively making it next to impossible to own their own businesses. These restrictions are only the tip of the iceberg, and the restriction on guns a mere fleck on that tip. The prohibition on Jews owning guns had little to do with any Nazi desire for gun control, and a whole lot to do with creating racial outcasts.

Here's one last bit of context, and one that's highly disturbing. The evil villain view of Hitler leads one to believe that the majority of Germans did not like this tyrant, but were kept in line by the security appartus of the Nazi state. On the contrary, while the Nazis never got a majority of votes in legitimate elections, once they consolidated power Hitler gained the support of the vast majority of the population. 

The most disturbing thing to me about the Third Reich is that it needed popular support to enact its agenda, and the public was more than willing to oblige. If ordinary Germans had greater access to firearms at the time, I can't imagine it would have made much of a difference. Armed insurrections most likely would have been used by the state to justify even greater control and authority.

The decontextualized, inaccurate understanding of Nazi Germany used by the Right is one of their most pernicious tactics, since it abuses the historical record while poisoning our political discourse. It also distracts from the fact that firearms kill thirty thousand people in America every year. 400,000 Americans died fighting against Hitler and his allies in World War II, at our current rate we're losing that number to guns deaths every thirteen years or so. I think it's time we focus on the real carnage going on right now, rather than ghosts of tyrants based off of a willfully wrongheaded interpretation of the past.

Blinded by Their Racism: Breitbart Says that "Django UnChained" is the Most "Pro-Freedom" Movie of 2012...His Readers Still Hate It Anyway

Nate Silver was half-right it would seem. I am glad that he was correct about the New England Patriots beating Houston. With victory comes a cost: Gronk is out again, re-breaking his arm.

[An impolitic question. At what point does a player with amazing talents become a liability because he is too injury prone?]

Here I suggested that Django Unchained is a very racially "conservative" film. Consequently, it a perfect fit for the myth that is post racial America. I also observed how Tarantino's great film should be embraced by the Right because it is a nice fit for the public face which they use to 1) insincerely argue for "colorblind politics" and 2) how they fetishize guns. Populist Tea Party GOP conservatives are unable to understand those basic facts. Why? Because the White Right's deep racism and hostility to people of color compromises their thought processes and reason.

There are some conservatives who are more "principled" than others. For example, while he throws in the obligatory right-wing talking points about "god" and "liberals," Ezra Dulis' essay on Django Unchained over at Breitbart is both substantive and critical. As such, it should be seriously reflected upon:

"Django" is about liberalism and tyranny, and the era of American slavery was a perfect illustration of it. There was no law from the government directly limiting the freedom of slaves; it was on a human level—one man telling another, "I own you," and that becoming the established social order...

For those worried by Django's line in the trailer, "Kill white folks and they pay you for it? What's not to like?", this is no racial revenge fantasy. Django's revenge against the men who owned him comes at the end of the film's first act. What follows is a chivalrous rescue mission; his own freedom secured, Django fights through hellfire to liberate his wife when he could have just started fresh.

However, Breitbart's readers would seem to disagree with Dulis' reading of Django Unchained. All these conservatives can see is a black man killing white people in a movie made by their archenemy evil Big Socialist Hollywood. Django may be an African-American slave fighting for the freedom of his wife and to restore their family against the tyranny of America's Slaveocracy. But, he is still killing white people who just happen to be slavers.

It would seem that for the White Right, their allegiance to the principles of human freedom and liberty are bounded and limited by the color of the agents involved. Once more, in post civil rights America conservatism and racism are shown to be one and the same.

Racism, white racial resentment, and conservatism are conjoined twins quite literally attached to each other at the head and heart while also somehow managing to have a three-way orgy of political coitus. The histrionics of the Right in the Age of Obama are the premiere example of this social and political phenomena.

Apparently, as demonstrated by their response to Breitbart's endorsement of Django Unchained, the Right's mix of white victimology, conspiranoid fantasies, and embrace of a fact-free world even trickles down to their dislike of Django Unchained and its supposed  "anti-white" agenda.  

Lest You Misunderstand: Django Unchained is a Movie by A White Filmmaker That Fulfills the Fantasies of White People in the Age of Obama

This is a football weekend. I am so excited to watch my Patriots win later today. I agree with Nate Silver: the championship will be a contest between Seattle and the New England Patriots. Bring it on.

Folks are still talking about Django Unchained. To point. Here is an interesting podcast with some smart folks at the website PostBourgie. I may disagree with their conclusions; I do respect the spirit of their dialogue.

I was going to post a critical essay on Django Unchained as promised, but decided to pass for the moment. That blog post is gonna become a longer article that I am going to try to get published in a journal at some point.

However, I am hoping to do a podcast about Django Unchained with a very smart person that you will find (hopefully) both entertaining and enlightening, and which will cover similar ground if the plan comes together.

Nevertheless, I do have two thoughts related to Django Unchained that I would still like to share here.

First, in response to the young black woman on the bus talking to her friends about the movie: Django is not a biopic or a "historical" movie. Jamie Foxx is not a real person. I do not know why you were crying during the movie. The events you watched were fictionalized.

However, I do understand where you are coming from. As a young black woman, you may have been shocked or surprised by the relatively restrained depiction of the Southern Slaveocracy that Tarantino presented. Our public schools are sub-par in many ways. Your history teachers may have failed you. I do not blame you for their shortcomings.

I once had a student sheepishly confess that she thought that the movie Forrest Gump was a biography. In thinking about Django Unchained, I am quite concerned that too many folks will make a similar mistake. I do not think that you are alone is misreading Django. 

Second, on the surface, Django Unchained is a "black movie." In reality, Django is a movie primarily for white folks, and that caters to the sentiments, self-serving lies, and fantasies of post racial America. I will not unpack that observation. I will leave it for you all to process.

After repeat viewings, I still love Django Unchained; however, I do not think that most viewers are privy to Quentin Tarantino's deft sleight of hand in regards to the deeper racial politics at work in his film.

Yes, he is a negrophile. He is also a master filmmaker. He is also a hall of fame first ballot member of the Legion of Ghetto Nerds.

Never forget that first and foremost, Quentin Tarantino is making a movie that suits the sentiments and emotions of white folks in post civil rights America through the motif of a Spaghetti Western slavery counter-factual revenge flick.

Ironically, white conservatives hate Django Unchained. If they could get past their deep anti-black and brown racism and prejudice they would see that Django is a neat fit for the public face of their racial politics. White racial resentment blinds them to this fact.

Quentin Tarantino is a genius. Part of Tarantino's genius is that most folks do not get the meta game that he is playing.

Well played Quentin. I salute you. 

Watch Out! Of Guns, Citizenship, and Freedom: A Letter from a Black World War One Soldier to the Jim Crow Draft Board That Sent Him to Europe

We have been talking about gun culture and masculinity a good amount here in the aftermath of the Newtown massacre. Given the madness of the gun right, and their efforts to appropriate everything from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., to black enslavement in the New World in order to further their agenda, it is easy to dismiss the relationship between the gun and "freedom."

Moreover, Alex Jones' pro wrestling promo for a second American Revolution, Drudge's invocation of Hitler and Stalin in linking gun control to President Obama, and this screed by James Yeager (a gun rights "advocate" that threatens to murder people if "gun control" legislation is enacted in the United States) are further encouragement for how reasonable citizens can so easily dismiss the mental health of the "gun rights" crowd with such relative ease. 

The Gun Right's standard bearers are unhinged cartoon characters who are not truly interested in the Common Good. However, these people are so very dangerous because they have the arsenal with which to carry out their paranoid fantasies of defense against "persecution" by a "tyrannical" government. 

These same folks also have a very powerful network of lobbyists who do the bidding of the gun industry, and have mastered emotional appeals through the the language of "rights" and "freedom" in order to keep their corporate masters' tills full and overflowing with gold and treasure from the blood of children.

While taking a careful account of the crazy factor common to the Gun Right in the Age of Obama, we must not forget that the gun is a tool which has been used by freedom fighters, revolutionaries, and tyrants alike. As I discussed with Professor Ann Little in our most recent podcast, whatever we make of its semiotics, the gun is ultimately also a symbol of masculine power, the phallus, and control over life and death. 

I like to share pithy bits of writing when I come upon them. I was reading Lost Battalions by Richard Slotkin (whose great interview with me about American identity and gun culture will be featured on WARN's podcast series this upcoming week) when I came up the following letter from Private Sidney Wilson, a black soldier serving in the United States Army during World War One, to the draft board in Jim and Jane Crow era Tennessee: 

If afoads to the soldier boys wich you have sint so far away from home a great deal of pledger to write you a few line to let you know that you low-down Mother Fuckers can put a gun in our hands but who is able to take it out? We may go to France but I want to let you know that it will not be over with untill we straiten up this state. We feel like we have nothing to do with this war, so if you are thinks it, just wait till Uncle Sam puts a gun in the niggers hands and you will be sorry of it, because we have coloured luetinan up here, and thay is planning against this country everday. So all we wants now is the ammunition, then you can all look out, for we is coming.

He is no Rob Williams. The political philosophy is not fleshed out here; nor, does it rise to the level of political ideology. The anger is raw. His heart is real. But, this brother's understanding of the power of the gun, and both its practical and symbolic meaning, cannot be discounted. 

Is this letter funny or sad? And how must white elites have been shaken up by how practical concerns such as the Civil War and World War One necessitated the mobilization of black men in wartime, when the latter would learn the lethal arts and then come home and demand their full citizenship rights (again and again and again)?

It is no wonder why the Racial State has repeatedly gone to such great lengths to oppress black and brown folks who had found the dignity of the gun and a uniform. We had paid our freedom dues; those who owed us the check would do anything to renege on payment in full. And eventually those same elites were bent (if not broken) as they made a tactical retreat and surrender to the inexorable demands of the Black Freedom Struggle during the Cold War. 

As I am fond of asking, what is Sidney Wilson thinking about the United States today as he either looks on from the afterlife, or walks among us reincarnated?

Politics as Professional Wrestling: Alex Jones Goes "Dr. Death" and Cuts a Worked Shoot Promo on Piers Morgan

In a democracy, The Fourth Estate is supposed to perform a watchdog function where it educates citizens, helps to shape the public mood, sets the agenda for public debate, and most importantly, gives citizens the information necessary to hold their elected officials and government accountable.

With the rise of corporate media, the news establishment has become more of an organ of state power and elite interests than a force for the Common Good and a radically democratic political culture.

As an example of what passes for public discourse in a 24/7 news environment that is driven by ratings, where the public's attention is compressed into small segments, and complex information is processed into soundbites, Alex Jones and Piers Morgan engaged in an "conversation/interview" that was a spectacle.

The Left and other reasonable folks who care deeply about correcting America's sick relationship with guns can mock and laugh at the lunacy of Alex Jones and his Gun Right black helicopter New World order conspiranoid fantasies. The Right and those others who support Alex Jones position on gun ownership as the preeminent "right" of Americans under the Constitution, and that fantasize about a second American Civil War fought against a "tyrannical" government can crow that their champion went on national television and waved his/their flag high.

Both sides can feel satisfied. However, the American people and the Common Good are losers in this game. While we should be having a serious conversation about how gun violence is a public health crisis, serious matters are reduced to a carnival.

As I discussed a few months ago, my claim that politics shares much with professional wrestling explains a great deal about the Jones-Morgan debate, and how it has captured the attention of the public.

Would You Play a Video Game about Black Slavery and the Underground Railroad?

If you want to play a video game about the Underground Railroad click here.

One of my favorite conversations here on We Are Respectable Negroes was about race and role-playing games. Since that very instructive and spirited dialogue, I have tried to keep my eyes open for related stories.

As a ghetto nerd, I love a good game in any form. As someone who thinks a great deal about the relationship between pleasure and the politics of popular culture, those distractions which are supposedly just "fun" or "harmless," are of particular interest to me. How we choose to play is never "neutral"; rather, such choices are mediated by culture and Power, tell us a great deal about a given society, and are powerful lenses for thinking through questions of political socialization.

Several months ago, I became aware of a video game for elementary school children that would teach them about the underground railroad and the American slaveocracy. This game is now complete and has been released online. For those of us who are interested in power and social identity, the role of technology in society is of great importance as we try to grapple with how such categories as race, class, gender, and sexuality are imagined, taught, reinforced, contested, shared, and learned.

There are technologies of race. For example, the mass media was integral to the creation of the racial state and also its relative dismantlement. The Internet and social media are tools for political socialization. Racism has moved to the "backstage" and online. As such, cyber-racism is one of the most recent means through which white supremacist and colorblind racist discourses are disseminated to the public.

I am not a Luddite. However, I am deeply fascinated with the piss poor state of technological literacy in the United States. Just as too many people believe that if they see a thing on TV it must be true, there are sad foolish legions who trust the Internet to be a bastion of "truth," when in reality it is an organ of Power and mass culture--disseminating lies, half-truths, disinformation, and other intellectual chaff to the collective social (sub)consciousness.

Moreover, video games have a mixed history as a type of mass entertainment in regards to questions of race, identity, politics, and political socialization.

The most recent iteration of the game Assassin's Creed has dealt with such issues as the genocide of First Nations' peoples, chattel slavery, and presenting a more "realistic" version of Colonial America.

There is also a new game in development about the Lewis and Clark Expedition which does not ignore York, the black slave, fellow journeyman, intrepid explorer, history maker on that famed expedition, and the particular issues of freedom and bondage embodied (quite literally) by his role in that adventure.

And the very latest Bioshock game promises to offer loads of thinking material about libertarianism, technology, and questions of power and identity--I cannot wait for it to debut in a few months.

And then there is The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley. On the surface it is relatively benign. I am sure that the intentions of its creators are also noble. Yet, sometimes the sum impact of a given innocent endeavor can be extremely problematic and outsized.

As I said about role-playing chattel slavery in the game Steal Away Jordan, I do not know how to make a game out of the struggle of black bondsmen and bondswomen to be free. I do not know how to present their struggles in the context of a game, where the "characters" are awarded health points and bonuses as they try to follow the North Star to freedom. I do not know how to present slave patrols and slave catching dogs in the context of a video game. In all, I am not interested in coming up with the game mechanics for such scenarios, as that effort mocks and minimizes my/our ancestors great freedom struggle.

The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley is the result of many decisions by a range of individuals to create a product with an explicit purpose, design, and end goal. At some point, the creators of The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley talked with one another and said, "yes, a game about the Underground Railroad and American slavery makes perfect sense!"

I am very curious about the thought process that lead these good folks to decide that the Black Holocaust was a fitting setting for a game, while the Holocaust of Jews and many many others in Europe was not. Why not make a game about the Armenian Genocide? What about an action adventure set on the Trail of Tears? What about the Rape of Nanking? What decision rules are involved? Why are some horrors fair play, and others are considered bad taste for an exercise in educational technology?

Apparently, there is something about the murder of millions of black people in the centuries-long Transatlantic Slave Trade and Western slaveocracy which apparently makes it reasonable source material for speculative fantasy movies and video games. I wonder that it is?

The Underground Railroad in the Ohio River Valley can be played online at this link. I am very curious about your reaction to it. How do you reconcile the good intentions of its creators with the game's aesthetics, structure, and narrative? Ultimately, are there some historical events that cannot be reduced to the premise of a video game?

A provocative question: how are books any different in terms of mediated experiences? Are my objections rooted primarily in form as opposed to content? How do we bridge the gap between how different types of texts communicate meaning?

My Advice for a Black Woman Whose White Boyfriend "Just Used the N-Word"

Dear Prudence, the advice column at Slate has a case that I thought worthy of engaging to start the week. Prudence offered up some reasonable--and I think very careful thinking--in response to a black woman whose white boyfriend called one of her friends a "nigger."

"Unspeakable," the woman who wrote Prudence ended her letter with the following: "He came to me and apologized profusely and had tears in his eyes while doing so. I accepted his apology because it was completely out of character for him, but I am now questioning our relationship. What do you think?

Channeling my best advice columnist voice, here are my thoughts on the matter. What advice would you give her?
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I can only imagine your hurt at having someone you care for use such language. One of the challenges of the post civil rights era, and especially the "post racial" multicultural moment where we as a society have internalized a "colorblind" set of scripts and rules for public discourse, is that white Americans have created bogeyman outliers who they can easily mock and deride as "evil" racists, "those people," or throwbacks.
 
The reality is far more troubling and challenging: the racist is looking at us in the mirror, he or she is our friend, neighbor, relative, or colleague. In many instances, white racism has simply moved to the "backstage" where it is couched in racial humor, tweeted online as a "joke," makes itself polite by using the language of "bad culture," white privilege laced opines about "American individualism," the Horatio Alger myth, or "real America."

Contemporary white racism also slips out in casual conversation when said person thinks they are among like minded people. This is a double hurt in your case because the great reveal was by someone who you consider an intimate. You had presumed that this white man who loves a black woman would not use such speech to describe another black person. You were proven wrong.

Questions of Black Murder and Revenge: Please Teach Me Something about the "Zebra Murders"

For six months, straddling late 1973 and early 1974, the city had 14 random killings. Most of the victims never saw it coming, shot in the back or the back of the head, execution-style, in what came to be called the Zebra murders. 

The shootings were racially motivated and usually happened at night along the Divisadero Street corridor. Here are three that were out of the norm but crucial to the case. 

On the evening of Oct. 19, 1973, Quita and Richard Hague came out of their four-story Victorian apartment building at 399 Chestnut St., at Stockton Street. They went west, downhill toward North Beach, maybe in front of Francisco Middle School one block down, when a white van pulled alongside with three men inside. The body of Quita Hague, 28, was found the next day on the railroad tracks across town. Her husband survived. The spree had begun. 

Two months later, on Dec. 13, 1973, the killer struck again, at the corner of Wisconsin and 23rd streets, on Potrero Hill. Social worker Art Agnos, 35, had left a meeting and was walking to his car when people started fleeing from a loud popping noise. The future mayor tried to calm them before realizing he had been shot twice in the back. 

On Jan. 28, 1974, Jane Holly, a 45-year-old Wells Fargo clerk, went into the Lightning Coin Launderette at 1440 Silver Ave., just off San Bruno Avenue. Her back was to the door. She was pulling clothes out of the dryer as a gunman walked toward the rear of the 24-hour wash-and-dry.

In our recent discussions about gun violence, Django Unchained, and America's gun culture, I have learned a great deal. Several commenters have offered up interesting bits of information, such as this reference to Robert Charles, a black man who shot 27 white people in the year 1900 during the height of Jim and Jane Crow.

I have also had an interesting discussion about black mass shooters and the argument that such crimes by African-Americans are somehow under-reported. Such a claim is fascinating because of how it stands against volumes of evidence about the racialized nature of crime reporting in the United States, and how stereotypes about black criminality are integral to the prison industrial complex, and the school to prison pipeline.

I may not always agree with folks here on WARN--which is part of the fun of our honest conversations--but I always learn something from the exchange.

In the spirit of seeking new information and knowledge, I also enjoy reading white nationalist websites. As I have said many times before, one must understand their enemies as not to be ambushed by them. Their waters are toxic and befouled; they are pure to the supplicants and white nationalist troglodytes.

During the Right-wing media's online fit about Django Unchained, and the prospect that a black man may actually want to kill white slave owners and other white racists during the 19th century (and Hollywood may dare to present such a fantasy in the form of a major motion picture), I came upon repeated references to the "Zebra Murders."

These were common White deflections where white racists search high and low for examples of black "racism," criminality, or violence in order to balance the centuries-long historical record of white supremacy's barbarisms against people of color--and also against white folks who did not follow the dominant script. The false equivalence is glaring; nevertheless, it is still instructive.

As a person of a certain age, I had never heard of the Zebra Murders. As a child of the hip hop generation and the New York-New Jersey-Connecticut area who was born in the 1970s, I was too young and geographically distant from California to have ever encountered any information about a murder spree that was supposedly committed by Nation of Islam members against whites (and others) in the Bay area from 1973 to 1974.

Color me fascinated by this tale of interracial murder, police corruption and racism; resentment towards Earl Sanders, the black Police Chief of the San Francisco police department; and what is a fascinating story that has been optioned for a movie by Brad Pitt and starring Jamie Foxx and Will Smith.

They Be So Ghetto: Did Steven Levitt of Freakonomics Fame Commit "Academic Blackface" With This Blog Post?

The Internet can get you in trouble. It can take an inside joke meant to be shared by a few friends and circulate it to hundreds or thousands of people. If you are one of the country's preeminent and most popular economists the Internet can circulate your inside joke to millions.

Several weeks ago, Steve Levitt, a genius and a starred economist, took some very important research on the black-white achievement gap in education that he co-authored with Harvard's Roland Fryer, and using a website, "translated" it into "ghetto English" which he then featured at Freakonomics.com.

I am a fan of dark and ironic humor. I also understand that Dr. Levitt is playing around with academic conventions regarding language, and how insular and self-important said community can be in regards to the rites and rituals of writing, research, and publishing. He is also likely having fun with notions of "code-switching" and the arbitrariness of language conventions.

But, there is something uncomfortable about watching Steve Levitt, a white economist who studies behavior, culture, economic decision-making, and the political economy of the everyday, playing this game with an important article on educational outcomes and race--one which reaches the following conclusion:

Compared with the results of previous studies, our findings provide reason for optimism. We find smaller achievement gaps, in both the raw and the adjusted scores, for children born in the early 1990s than others had found for earlier birth cohorts. It could well be that, as compared with earlier generations of students, the current cohort of blacks has made real gains relative to whites. Indeed, recent cohorts show smaller raw black-white gaps across multiple data sets–a truly promising sign. 

Once students enter school, however, the gap between white and black children grows, even after controlling for observable influences. We speculate that blacks are losing ground relative to whites because they attend lower quality schools that are less well maintained and managed as indicated by signs of social discord. Though we recognize that we have not provided definitive proof, this is the only hypothesis that receives any empirical support.

Here is the same conclusion "translated" into ghetto English:

Compared wit tha thangs up in dis biatch of previous studies, our findings provide reason fo' optimism. Our thugged-out asses find smalla achievement gaps, up in both tha raw n' tha adjusted scores, fo' lil pimps born up in tha early 1990s than others had found fo' earlier birth cohorts. It could well be that, as compared wit earlier generationz of students, tha current cohort of blacks has done cooked up real gains relatizzle ta whites. Git tha fuck outta mah grill wit dat bullshit, recent cohorts sheezy smalla raw black-white gaps across multiple data sets–a truly promisin sign. 

Once students enter school, however, tha gap between white n' black lil pimps grows, even afta controllin fo' observable influences. Our thugged-out asses speculate dat blacks is losin ground relatizzle ta whites cuz they attend lower-qualitizzle schools dat is less well maintained n' managed as indicated by signz of hood discord. Y'all KNOW dat shit, muthafucka! Though our crazy-ass asses recognize dat our crazy-ass asses have not provided definitizzle proof, dis is tha only hypothesis dat receives any empirical support. 

Roland G. Fryer Jr. be a junior fellow all up in tha Harvard Society of Fellows n' a gangbangin' faculty research fellow all up in tha Nationizzle Bureau of Economic Research. Right back up in yo muthafuckin ass. Steven D. Levitt be a professor of economics all up in tha Universitizzle of Chicago. 

While some have suggested that Levitt's post is "racist," I am not sure if said adjective is a good fit for his failure of good taste.

Posting a private joke online (at a website that is followed by millions of people) is ill advised.

Posting a private joke about race, poverty, and education, especially when you are one of the country's foremost economists (and by all accounts a pretty nice and cool guy), also reminds us of the troubled history and relationship between the academy, and the poor and working class communities that many elite institutions find themselves surrounded by. The town/gown distinction is real; the elite institution/ghetto underclass divide, where the latter is a convenient laboratory for the former to study, is real as well.

Did Steve Levitt commit "academic blackface?" I am not sure. And should it matter if he did? It is all a joke anyway, isn't it?

What Would Annie Davis Say Today? A Letter From A Slave to President Lincoln Asking What She Can do to Secure Her Own Freedom

January 1, 2013 was the 150th anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. While we discuss movies such as Lincoln and Django (the latter with its fantasic and more real than real depiction of the historical realities of the Southern slaveocracy) it must not be forgotten that "popular" and "filmic" representations of reality are actually stand-ins for actual people and human events (many of them mundane and quotidian; others, life changing and world shifting).

As is often said by those in Cultural and Media Studies, films talk to each other about themselves and are mirrors for the social moment in which they were produced. While ultimately about the "now" and the "present," "historical" movies are also exercises in representing past events and the people involved with them.

For example, if you are a Black American in your thirties or forties who can trace their lineage back through to the 19th or 18th century (or before), your grandmother's grandmother was likely born a slave.

For example, reflecting on the echoes of history into the present, I came upon this letter to President Lincoln, dated August, 25, 1864, from a former Maryland slave:

Mr. President,

It is my Desire to be free. To go to see my people on the eastern shore. My mistress wont let me.You will please let me know if we are free. And what I can do. I write to you for advice. Please send me word this week. Or as soon as possible, and oblidge.

Annie Davis

The Emancipation Proclamation was an acknowledgement of how black people had long been freeing themselves across the South, was a tactical move to further disrupt the CSA's labor supply and resource pool, was complicated in its enforcement by the border states, and while a document rooted in realpolitik, is rightly hailed for its symbolic value in a country fighting over its status as one that would be either "free" or "slave."

A Conversation with Professor Ann Little About the Newtown Massacre, Adam Lanza, America's Gun Culture, and the Puzzle of White Masculinity

I hope that the New Year was restful and celebratory. Before Christmas, there was a momentary "national conversation" about gun violence in the aftermath of the Newtown Massacre. Curiously, but not surprising, said moment of introspection about how America's gun culture eats it youth has fallen off of the national radar as the pundit classes have moved on to other matters. There will be other mass shootings; we will have said "national conversation" again; nothing will be done given the NRA's murder hold on the American people.

As I explored in a series of posts, the central question regarding the Gun Right is how these mass shootings do not lead to any serious exploration of the intersection(s) of Whiteness, White Masculinity, and mass gun violence. White men commit an overwhelming amount of the mass shootings in the United States. Yet, except for a few outliers, there is no sustained effort to engage the obvious puzzle: if white men are killing people, often by the dozens--in murders where they are the offenders at twice their rate in the general population--why are so many in the news media afraid and hostile to basic questions about "white crime?"

In my effort to explore this question, I reached out to two great scholars of American history and culture. Both kindly agreed to participate in WARN's podcast series.

Our first guest is Professor Ann Little, author of the book Abraham in Arms: War and Gender in Colonial New England, who writes over at the great website Historiann. In our podcast, she does a wonderful job of setting up our conversation by offering a wonderful, rich, and insightful perspective on the Newtown Massacre and the colonial era roots of the United States' (near pathological) love of guns in the present

Dr. Little was so very generous with her time. We covered a great amount of material in this conversation and offered up a necessary, and to this point, very much lacking historical context for the Newtown Massacre, and the fear by many in the pundit classes to even discuss white masculinity and gun violence.

This was a real treat. I was so glad to be able to bring this dialogue to the readers of We Are Respectable Negroes and those who follow our podcast series.

I do hope you enjoy the conversation.

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2:59 As a historian and scholar of America and gun culture, what were your first thoughts about the Newtown Massacre?
6:18 How do we begin to think broadly about masculinity and gun culture in the United States, and how it helps us to understand Adam Lanza's murder spree?
11:22 The gun and white male citizenship in colonial America and the Founding
15:00 Is the magical thinking of Conservatives typified by the gun control debate? What are some of the regional differences in regards to gun culture in the United States? How is this surprising (or not)?
23:55 An open letter to white men. Beginning to think about White masculinity, Whiteness and gun violence
29:25 How do people respond to conversations where whiteness and masculinity are interrogated and challenged?
34:40 Is White Masculinity a story of historical continuity or change? Is White Heterosexual Masculinity static?
48:27 More context for avoiding a critical interrogation of Whiteness and gun violence: White Mediocrity and the subsidization of Whiteness vs. the myth of American Meritocracy
56:14 Historical myopia, the luxury of being white and historical memory, and the allure of believing the "White Lies" of American history
62:14 What is your "blogging story?" How does blogging fit into your academic career?
64:03 The failure of academics to be able to effectively communicate with "regular" folks who are also smart like them
69:20 Academic writing's impact vs the audience and impact of blogging