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This week on CounterSpin: The crises we face right now in the US—a nominally democratic political process that’s strangled by white supremacist values, a corporate profiteering system that mindlessly overrides human needs to treat the environment as just another “input”—are terrible, but not, precisely, new. People have fought against these ideas in various forms before; and some strategies have been useful, others less so. The front line for us now is the fact that we have powerful actors who don’t just want to argue for particular ideas to guide us forward, but want to shut down the spaces in which we can have the arguments. And where a vigorous free press should be, we have corporate, commercial media that don’t have defending those spaces as their foremost concern.
Luke Harris
One crucial thing we now know we need to pro-actively fight for: our right to learn and teach real US history. Listeners will have heard of the campaign against “critical race theory”—a set of ideas of which right-wing opponents gleefully acknowledge they know and care nothing, but are using as cover to attack any race-conscious, that’s to say accurate and appropriate, teaching.
CounterSpin put that cynical but impactful campaign in context last July with Luke Harris, co-founder and deputy director of the African American Policy Forum.
Joe Torres
Late last June, we talked about just the kind of story we all would know if our learning was inclusive and unafraid, the kind of story that would play a role in our understanding of the country’s growth—the 1921 massacre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in which 300 overwhelmingly Black people were killed, and some 800 shot or wounded. It’s a part of a sort of “hidden history” that the press corps have a role in hiding, as we discussed with Joe Torres, senior director of strategy and engagement at the group Free Press, and co-author, with Juan González, of News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media.
CounterSpin spoke with Luke Harris in July of 2021.
Transcript: ‘We Can’t Fight for Racial Justice if We Can’t Learn About Racial Injustice’
We spoke with Joe Torres in June 2021.
Transcript: Tulsa: ‘A Cover-Up Happens Because the Powers That Be Are Implicated’
How about this? To win elections, you need votes, including the votes of whites in what remains a white majority country.
How exactly will this racial grievance program persuade non-blacks who don’t count themselves privileged (had a good look at the social pathologies of the white working classes and poor lately?) that they must put aside their own woes and grievances and devote their lives to to antiracism?
And not satisfied with re-directing their lives, you’re telling them that *they’re* the problem.
Times was, leftists talked about class. But that was before there was a living in anti-racism.
Want to lose all political power? Just keep this up.
Just so you know: those of us actually capable of entertaining divergent thoughts simultaneously, easily associate our ongoing class struggle with the attempts of privileged white oligarchs (SEE: billionaire$) to create racial conflict… instead of some modicum of racial justice.
BTW- WHERE exactly have you found want ads that pay Americans for their work in “anti-racism? Please provide a job description, too!
Really not expecting any kind of answer. More or less just pointing out your absurd biases.
Holy moly, B. Grower. No jobs in the antiracist racket?
You never heard of ethnic studies departments? The ones which employ the likes of Dr. Kendi? Or how about a “deputy director of the African American Policy Forum”?
Or diversity trainers and “oppression consultants”, beloved by corporate America?
Or the army of university administrators directors dedicated to reigns of terror based in DEI?
And the “sensitivity readers” in big publishing?
And on it goes. Start working on your resume, bro, you sound right for the job. Except maybe for one thing?
No idea what you are talking about. Please provide “anti-racism” want ads!
Exactly so.
Exactly what?
Despite virtually all of the mass media and comments here – racism and white privilege – is not the reason for every society evil or poor outcomes. Our culture has moved in such a negative direction, in the last decade, I am not so sure first responders would run up the WTC today. The victim cultural has real negative consequences. When you make heroes of people who contribute zero and demonize those who risk everything – its a major, major problem.
I would agree with that… if you include Julian Assange. Otherwise, B.S.
Now tats what I talking about Janine! Know what I am saying baby. Need our homies from the hood to keep speaken out. Enough with all these white devils plp teaching crap. Homies all – No justic no peace !!
“I’ve done a lot of work to get where I’m at, but I have to keep working.” -Wiz Khalifa.
Let’s convince poor black people that their problem is their skin color, and not their poverty. Let’s convince poor white people that social efforts to ameliorate their condition benefit only black people. Divide and conquer!
AMEN, brother!
That’s why they locked up Eugene V. Debs, and killed MLK, JFK, RFK, and Malcolm.