Barack Obama is the Black candidate--that is for sure. His presumptuous trip abroad where he may not know his place comes from a white supremacist mindset. The mainstream media is one step shy of calling him boy. His campaign is referred to as historic, which is a constant reminder of his blackness. We must keep in mind that everything is historic, for it turns into history in the blink of an eye. Let not the label of history hide the intentions of white supremacist beliefs. They run deep amongst us. And so we name him the black candidate, conscious or un-conscious.
Gender testing at the Olympics is very practical on the one hand, if we are to have fair competition. Right? Sports have been separated by gender as each gender couldn't compete with each other because that would be unfair to either of the given genders. Each is better at some stuff and worse at others. And thus separate but equal conditions ensue. But we are too smart to know what leads to separate but equal situations (Hint: it's a mindset of domination) and we are too smart to know what occurs with separate but equal (Hint: it's not equal). And so we have Men's sports and Woman's sports, and one of them gets unprecedented media attention, and thus our attention (Hint: it's not the woman).
Men are supposed to be competitive and in some sports, brutal. While woman are supposed to act like ladies. Just as blacks are not supposed to be in a position of control that goes with confidence. White confidence equals black presumptuousness. Male brutality equals female dykiness. And so we are all left with "black" and "female" are lesser than "white" and "male."
None of this is new--people have been saying this for years. I only wish to show how widespread this male dominated white supremacist ideology continues to be. No matter how small it shows itself, it exists. And it is all related!
The two articles deal with the issue of how we label...we think that labels exist to separate and create ease of recognition. But what are we recognizing in a label but a preconceived notion of whatever it is we are labeling? So do we not label anything? How would we define anything? To go to a "Label-free" society might have a similar oppressive feel as a "color-blind" society. Color-blindness is a neo-conservative political tool to undermine issue of race. A similar disaster could occur for gender and class and the physically and mentally "disabled."
So i don't know what we can do. But I ask us all to keep in the back of our head the oppression that is inherent in a label. Because who is it that is doing the labeling?
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/opinion/02herbert.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/opinion/03boylan.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&_ref=opinion
1 comment:
Good post Cooser, even if you are using "oppression" and "oppressive" so much lately in your speech it makes me want to oppress your head with a baseball bat, but i digress.
I just thought something I found on the online version of the New York Times needed to be discussed. The original post was by a NYT blogger about Obama's need for Bill Clinton to fight for him and as the comment posts went down it was over and over again people calling for Obama to lose because he's not Hillary Clinton or to pick Hillary Clinton as his running mate "or else they wouldn't vote for him", maybe even vote for McCain out of spite. Getting beyond how ridiculous this is for anybody that calls them self liberal or progressive, there was a post that particularly caught my eye. Its short so I'll just copy and paste it here.
"August 4th,
2008
3:21 pm
How much “blackness” does Mr. Obama have?
Biologically, 50%. His father was from Africa and his mother is a white.
Social economically , 0%. His father was never there for him. He is raised by his mother and white relatives. He went to schools with a few blacks. Most of his friends are white.
Why do over 95% African Americans vote for him? Because he looks black! But he has no ‘blackness’ except his skin color.
— Posted by Frank"
I need more time to mull over how ridiculous and racist and all other words this is, but I wanted to bring it up for discussion and to attention. I mean I kind of expect it on the Wall Street Journal or FoxNews but the New York Times, and nobody speaking to it, I was taken aback.
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