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This week on CounterSpin: What do we want? Multiracial democracy. When do we want it? Now. What stands in the way? White supremacy that has disregarded, derailed and violently defied that democracy at multiple turns.
Those anguished over the Rittenhouse acquittal, depressed by racist police brutality, unnerved by the failure to take seriously the January 6 insurrection, and worried about systemic predations on voting rights are sometimes led to say: “This isn’t America!” If you attend to actual US history (importantly different from what you might’ve read in your history textbook, or what you might someday be allowed to read in your history textbook), you will understand that this is America. But that still doesn’t mean it has to be. This can be a turning point, if more of us understand that history isn’t something that happens to us, but something we DO.
Carol Anderson is the Charles Howard Candler professor of African-American studies at Emory University, and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy. We talk with her about her recent Guardian column on the historical and ongoing struggle between white supremacy and this country’s hopes for democracy.
Transcript: ‘White Supremacists Were Willing to Hold the United States Hostage’
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look at coverage of protest in India.
People who are anguished that a brainwashed child isn’t being put in prison over a tragedy 100% created by the “us vs them” rhetoric used by the corporate media should be ashamed of themselves and the “liberal” values they purport to hold.
Paul Thronson,
His name is Kyle Rittenhouse. What’s the problem, can’t you spell?
This so-called “brainwashed child,” was REJECTED for service by the U.S. Marine Corps, captured on video striking a juvenile girl in the face multiple times, and previously posted a video expressing frustration at being unarmed and therefore unable to fire live ammunition at a group of people leaving a drugstore in a hurry. Kyle also illegally obtained a deadly firearm using COVID stimulus money, used it to fire four rounds into an unarmed man, and then kill one more person while fleeing the scene. Nothing about any of that that sounds heroic to those with intelligence.
As for so-called “liberal” values: I believe ANY child armed with a rifle who kills an unarmed individual is a murderer. PERIOD. No debate. No exceptions. No excuses.
The most significant difference between your perspective and mine, is that I am willing to recognize and express awareness of the fact that a brown, black, yellow, red, or even a white child who lacked sufficient financial resources- would have been cuffed, stuffed, and shipped off to prison, with absolutely no questions asked!
The problem with white privilege, is that everyone else sees it even when you can’t.
The recent rise of a small minority of well-armed religious fanatics, mostly rural dwelling and predominantly identified by the pale glow of their white skin, marks the death knell for representative democracy as the vital ideology in a republic widely renowned as the United States of America. All that shall follow in this nation, might more aptly be described as little more than senseless human pain and agony… brought on by the same fear, hatred, and jealousy responsible for the enslavement of Africans four hundred years earlier.
By intertwining the simmering racist hostility of an entitled underclass now reluctant to take responsibility for their own economic failures, within a woven fabric that perverts our proven historical record, Donald Trump has somehow managed to weaponize ignorance into a code word for supremacy. The losers are now led by the Loser-in-Chief!
As long as false prophets and Christian men of the cloth continue to promote the false narrative of political betrayal in service to power, while indulging in fantasies of unsubstantiated online rumor, there shall continue to be a growing aggressive posture within the deluded masses so gleefully willing to include automatic weapons in their staged Christmas greetings.
Happy Holidays!