wacquant, urban outcasts (2008)

ghetto, banlieu, favela, etc. (1-12)

(1-2): key point--"urban marginality is not everywhere woven of the same cloth, and, all things considered, there is nothing suprising in that. the generic mechanisms that produce it, like the specific forms it assumes, become fully intelligible once one takes caution to embed them in the historical matrix of class, state, and space..."

(3): important--from the communal ghetto ("a compact and shaprly circumscribed sociospatial formation to which blacks of all classes were consigned and bound together by a broad complement of instituions specific to the group and its reserrved space"), to the fin-de-siecle hyperghetto ("novel, decentralized, territorial and organizational configuration characterized by conjugated segregation on the basis of race and class in the context of the double retrenchment of the labour market and the welfare state from the urban core, necessitating and eliciting the corresponding deployment of an intrusive and omnipresent police and penal apparatus.")

(3-4): important claim--"in the final analysis, however, it is the collapse of public institutions, resulting from state policies of urban abandonment and leading to the punitive containment of the black (sub-)proletariat, that emerges as the most potent and most distinctive cause of entrenched marginality in the American metropolis... the implosion of America's dark ghetto... [is] economically underdetermined and politically overdetermined: properly diagnosed, hyperghettoization is primarily a chapter in political sociology."

(5): Black Belt ("spatial relegation... operate[s] on the basis of race first and foremost, modulated by class position after the break of the 1960s, and both are anchored and aggravated by public policies of urban triage and neglect)" vs. Red Belt ("it is just about the reverse... where marginalization is primarily the product of a class logic, in part redoubled by ethnonational origin and in part attenuated by state action") [i forsee two questions here, already: (1) what does it mean for race and class to be distinct logics? can race stand on its own, outside of class?; (2) how can we speak of the state at once effecting this, and also autonomous from it?]

(5): working-class banlieues in France heterogenous; in US, stark monotony to the ghetto.

(5): important claim--"specifically racial dimension of urban marginality in the American metropolis." and it is this specifically racial character in America, he is stressing, that tells us that state structures and policies play a decisive role in "the differential stitching together of inequalities."

(7): and further key claim, re: periodization--thesis of the emergence of a new regime of urban poverty... "post-fordist poverty... is fueled by the growing instability and heterogeneity of the wage-labour relation in the context of rising inequality; increasingly disconnected from the short-term cyclical fluctuations of the national economy and accentuated by the recoiling of the social welfare state; and tends to concentrate in defamed and desolate districts where the erosion of a sense of 'place'... and the absence of a collective idiom of claims-making exacerbate the experience and effects of deproletarianization and destitution."

(7): neoliberalism as a challenge to the possibility of citzenship (can we indict capitalism? because it doesn't seem like we're rehabilitating the fordist moment, either?) not promising that the positive project is van parijs and the 'basic income.' total cop-out.

(8-12): five recommendations

1. and foremost--clearer separation between "folk concepts" used by decision makers and residents and the "analytical concepts" that social scientists must construct.
2. situate it in time--"in the diachronic sequence of historical transformations... [not] to forget that urban space is a historical and political construction in the strong sense of the term..."
3. ethnographic observation as an indispensable tool (a surreptitious swipe at the others in the field, too)
   
4. distinguish between social condition, position in hierarchy of places, and function for broader metropolitan system
5. the degree and form of state penetration

(12): police fetishism--criminalization of a social problem

(12): hint at state responsibility for the fact of urban outcasts (this is important--again, because it raises the question of how the state can be both implicated in, and attenuating, the same process)

chapter one, the return of the repressed (15-39)

(15-16): the ideology of the fordist years (w. w. rostow and daniel bell)--'democratic' in tocqueville's sense; the meritocracy; poverty as the residue of past inequities. welfare state in europe, free-market with targeted assistance in the US.

(17): lyndon johnson promising an end to poverty by 1976

(17-18): very unkind, here, to Marxism, arguing that it couldn't make sense of the continued salience of race. but whatever.

(20): est. damage following rodney king riots--one billion dollars!

(20): question--can we say anything about this periodization? that all of a sudden fordist society woke to the shocks of the riots of the last two decades of the 20th century? does this not elide the upheavals of the 60s (civil rights movement, most notably)?

(22): 1980s and 1990s riots driven by two logics, to varying degrees depending on country: (1) a logic of protest against ethnoracial injustics; (2) a class logic pushing the impoverished working class to rise up against economic deprivation.

(24): violence is typically viewed as violence from below (the product of the pathologies of the underclass)--"yet, far from being irrational expressions of impenitent incivility..., the public disorders caused by dispossessed youthsin the cities... over these past dozen years constitue a (socio)logical response to the massive structural violence unleashed upon them by a set of mutually reinforcing economic and sociopolitical changes..."

(25): three types of violence from above, then:

1. mass unemployment; labor precariousness and deproletarianzation.
   
2. relegation to decaying neighborhoods (disinvestment, etc.)
3. heightened stigmatization in daily life as well as in public discourse

(25): and the structural argument, which is critical--"this return of the repressed... must be understood as the result of the uneven, disarticulating development of the most advanced sectors of capitalist societies..." [again, i am concerned that we are not going to be able to explain, properly, widespread discontent in the 'fordist' moment if our operative variable is neoliberalization]

(27): 'deproletarianization' as the "outright denial of access to wage-earning activities..." a rise in the unemployed; but also in the long-term unemployed, who aren't captured by these figures, remember.

(27): notion of the formation of an 'excess reserve army of labor' (citing cardoso!), which arises through this widespread exclusion from wage-labor.

(28): new immigrants in this economy, "tend to congregate in the poorer neighbourhoods of large urban centres..." what's more, their arrival has coincided with 'flight' from the city centres, thus resulting in greater social polarization [again, i think he would be the first to admit that we are dealing in generalities, here]

(29): unemployment in S. Central LA up to 60% in 1992

(29): 'territorial stigma', not to be underestimated

(30): "lastly,there is the curse of being poor in the midst of a rich society in which participation in the sphere of consumption has become a sine qua non of social dignity -- a passport to personhood if not citizenship..."

(30-31): important--the infra-political is taking the place of the actively political--"formal means of pressure on the state have declined along with the disruption and decomposition of traditional machineries of political representation of the poor."

(31-33): role/place of the police -- "whenever the police come to be considered as an alien force by the population they are supposed to protect, they become unable to fulfil any role other than a purely repressive one..."

(34): the problem can be criminalized, or politicized--it is the former in the US, the latter in France, and somewhere in between in the UK

(35): important--but even in France, he's noting, the commitment to address these issues politically does not go far enough (because they focused solely on "urban redevelopment/housing")--"it does nothing to attack its root causes: the fragmentation of wage labour feeding unemployment and casual employment." [there is an important implication, here, about the radical nature of the kinds of reforms that would work--which makes this universal basic income advocacy seem out-of-place]

(37): identifying, again, the epochal transformation of the economies concerned as cause of urban disorder--"deregulation of financial markets, desocialization of wage work, revamping of labor to impose 'flexibility.', social polarizatio of the cities, and state policies that have promoted corporate expansion over social redistribution...

(38): noting, here, that the African-Americans were the "exception" in the Fordist compromise; what are the theoretical consequences of this 'exceptionality'? -- but isn't this all highly dubious? a romanticizing of the conjuncture, for sure, no? but maybe we don't want to overstate the rejoinder, either?

chapter two, the state and fate of the dark ghetto at century's close (43-)

(43): 'slow rioting' of internal social decay and endemic crime

(44): the image of the "underclass"

(44): from war on poverty, to war on welfare -- and decline of black social movements.

(44): Moynihan calling for 'benign neglect', rather than the massive state intervention called for by the Kerner Commssion (though this is in 1968, don't forget. sort of undercuts the notion that the Fordist period had this resolved--though, at the same time, he has already made an exception for african-americans)

(46): critical--for all of this questioning of his periodization, he has made the point quite clear: the contemporary american ghetto (the "hyperghetto") is substantively distinct from the ghetto of the Fordist years (the "communal ghetto"), in ways already elucidated. and this makes sense, so long as we are willing to make this explicit (i.e., the perpetual failure of capitalism to resolve this question..) [this is quite aside, of course, from what we might want to ask about his picture of the communal ghetto, which seems overly romanticized--and this is important, for it serves as a point of comparison.]

(47): key--America's black belt... "is the product of a novel political articulation of racial cleavage, class inequality, and urban space in both dominant discourse and objective reality." (and not simply economic, ecological change...)

(47-48): going to concentrate, here, on the external conditions of this development (and makes the reasons explicit)

(48): takes a swipe at cornel west, for using the idiom of the 'underclass' [there is the odd nativity game going on, which might just interact with wacquant's arrogance in interesting ways]

(49): three caveats, before looking at the ghetto

1. "not simply a topographic entity... but an institutional form... a distinctive, spatially based, concatenation of mechanisms of ethnoracial closure and control..."
2. not something to be exoticized
3. ghetto does not suffer from disorganization, but differential organization [reminds me of Simmel, no?]

(51-52): blacks as only group to have undergone ghettoization (others lived in ethnic clusters)--"total, involuntary, and perpetual segregation"

(52): (1) spatial decentering and institutional differentiation of the ghetto [what does this all mean, exactly?]; (2) the scale of the involution.

(54): important--"yet the most significant brute fact of everyday life in the fin-de-siecle ghetto is without contest the extraordinary prevalence of physical danger and the acute sense of insecurity that pervades its streets." "this is a "reasoned response" (both in the sense of echo and retort) to various kinds of violence from above."

(55): males in bangladesh over age 35 had a higher probability of survival than their counterparts in harlem in 1990s

(58): involution following the trend of increasing joblessness (from about half of the population employed in south side in 1950, to more than 77% of those above the age of 16 left w/o a job in 1980)

(58-59): the rise and fall of the communal ghetto (first, blacks of all classes were put together; than as 'white flight' opened up some space, the petty bourgeoisie, etc., fled)--"by the late 1970s, the urban colour line had effectively been redrawn along a class fracture at the behest of the government."

(59): in sum, a three-fold movement that has resulted in the present conjuncture

1. "the out-migration of stably employed african-american families made possible by state-sponsored white flight to the suburbs"
2. "the crowding of public housing in black areas;"
   
3. "the rapid deproletarianization of the remaining ghetto residents."
   

(62): "oppressive as it was, the traditional ghetto formed 'a milieu for negro americans in which they could imbue their lives with meaning." [come on, we are broaching the outlandish here--this is not necessary for the larger argument, as far as i'm concerned]

(63): 82 percent of adults without a savings account in the late 1980s (the wealth gap is extraordinary, in general, let's not forget)

(64): informalization, here too as survival strategy (in other words, need to pin-down what is happening here vs. third world--is the mike davis narrative distinction overstated, in a sense?)

(66): yes--this is the other side of the entrepreneurial coin (don't let them forget it!)

(67): drug economy as a "subterranean welfare system"

(69): important--as far as "causes" of hyperghettoization go:

1. the transition of the american economy from fordist system of production for a mass-market, to more open/decentralized/service-intesnive system geared to increasingly differentiated consumption patterns (70-75)
   
2. rigid residential segregation, deliberate stacking of public housing in urban areas (75-80)
   
3. widespread retrenchment of an already miserly welfare state. (80-83)
   
4. turnaround in federal and local urban policy; 'planned shrinkage' of public services in historically black districts. (83-88)
   

(71): the ghetto no longer plays the role of reservoir of cheap industrial labor, as it did in a previous era (owing to deindustrialization; suburbanization of opportunities; shift to 'higher-education' jobs; continued racial segmentation of low-wage labor)

(74): the "stigma" that accompanies being associated with the ghetto

(75): this claim is confused, no? "the perpetuation of the exclusionary mission of the ghetto is first and foremost the concrete expression of the persistence of the 'colour line' in the metropolis even as it became overlaid by a class divide to produce a dual structure of black entrapment composed of a (sub)proletarian core and a middle-class periphery" [but all the same--descriptively this is all very valid; it is just fields' point about mistaking explanandum for explanans...]

(78-79): very useful account of how state was complicit in the ghettoization by focusing on massively subsidizing middle- and upper-class housing in the suburbs, and also by fostering public housing authorities within the bounds of the historic ghetto (kerner commission: 'federal housing programs concentrate the most impoverished and dependent segments of the population into the central-city ghettos wehre there is already a critical gap...').

(79): wow--"to this day, the united states remains the only advanced country in the world without significant state support for low-income housing in the world without significant state support for low-income housing, despite the glaring fact that nowhere have private developers bulit for the poor--in 1980, publicly owned or managed housing represented about 1 per cent of the US housing supply, compared to some 46 per cent in england and 37 per cent in france."

(80): "contrary to popular neoconservative rhetoric, the last quarter of the century was not a period of expansion and generosity for welfare but one of blanket retraction..."

(82): total abandonment/disinvestment by the public housing authorities

(82-83): regressive fiscal policies, on the part of the revanchist state

(84): nixon undoing the minimal interventions of johnson's war on poverty

(84): a window into our earlier discussions--"the political isolation of the cities, in turn, reinforced their role as entrepreneurs at the expense of their mission as social services providers, further fragmenting the revenue base on which the financing of public institutions rests..."

(84): planned shrinkage--recalls 'gentrification'

(85): public schools as custodial institutions, rather than educational institutions

(88): infants born in the poorest black districts of chicago are three times more likely to die than those born in wealthiest white districts; black men aged 15-45 die at six times the rate of men in white affluent neighborhoods

(89): grave mistake, following portes, has been to impute psychological reality to social phenomena -- "transform sociological conditions into psychological traits [of individuals"

(90): taking on william julius wilson for ignoring the role of the state and the decline of public institutions (he focuses instead on the disappearance of work)

(90): accusing massey of ignoring the distinctions between segregation and ghettoization, the communal ghetto and the hyperghetto.

(91): important--"it is this policy of state abandonment and punitive containment that best explains..." [it is unclear how much work we want to attribute to this, exclusively--in part it seems like he has to distinguish himself from the rest]

chapter three, the cost of racial and class exclusion in 'bronzeville' (92-118)

(92): in the mind of the neocon, poor as a "formless aggregate of pathological cases."

(93-94): in sum: "...the central argument of this chapter is that the vague and morally pernicious neologism of 'underclass' and its behavioral-cum-cultural slant mask a phenomenon pertaining to the macrostructural order: the ghetto has experienced a crisis not because the macrostructures of the family and individual conduct have suddenly collapsed or because a 'welfare ethos' has mysteriously taken hold of its residents, but because joblessness and economic exclusion, by rising to extreme levels against the backdrop of rigid racial segregation and state abandonment, have triggered a process of 'hyperghettoization'--in the sense of an exacerbation of the exclusionary logic of the ghetto as an instrument of ethnoracial control."

(94): wow--in 1980, 38% of poor african americans in the largest ten cities lived in ghettos (where 40% live below poverty line), compared to 22 percent in 1970 and only 6 percent of whites. [but again: ethnoracial exclusion cannot be your explanation for this--this is what you must explain]

(97): important--here we have a more useful explanation: "the most powerful vector behind the irresistible economic pauperization and social marginalization of large segments of the population penned in the segregated heart of chicago is a set of mutually reinforcing spatial and industrial changes in the country's urban political economy that converged during the 1960s and 1970s to undercut the material foundations of the ghetto by stripping it of its traditional role as reservoir of unskilled labour."

(98): but does he want to say that it is this, plus ethnoracial discrimination? which is true, of course, but not perhaps theoretically interesting... how do we want to frame this?

(98): blacks traditionally relied on manufacturing and blue-collar employment--its end, then, has led to 'labor market exclusion'

(101): what does this mean, though? that organizational changes in the economy "have combined with the black rejection of the caste regime through the Civil rights movement to break up the social structure of the traditional ghetto and set off a process of hyperghettoization."

(102): violent crime, drug consumption, etc., have all reached qualitatively different proportions in the hyperghetto

(104): "thus, when we counterpose extreme-poverty areas with moderate-poverty areas, we are in effect comparing the historic heart of the ghetto, born in the industrial era, with it postindustrial periphery."

(105): "the first major difference between the historic core of the ghetto and its rim areas pertains to their class structure. a sizable majority of the residents of the peripheral zones of the black belt are integrated into the wage-labour economy..."

(108): contours of the 'welfare trajectory'

(110): and particularly for the jobless, who have been locked into welfare dependence by lack of opportunities

(111): "thus, if the likelihood of tapping public aid increases sharply as one crosses the line between the employed and the jobless, it remains the case that, at each level of the class structure, welfare receipt is notably more frequent at the core of the ghetto than at its rim, especially among the unemployed and among women."

(112): wow--wealth table

(114): lower social capital--"all in all, then, the concentration of poverty at the core of the crumbling ghetto has the effect of systematically devaluing the social capital of those who live in its midst."

(116): most male companions have jobs, even though the vast majority of males don't--"being unemployed radically devalues men..."

(117): he's noting general economic growth in the rest of chicago, but a fracturing of that economic fate from the fate of the ghetto--we can ask about sassen's global city observation, here

chapter four, west-side story (119-132)

(119): important--"the united states can rightfully lay claim to being the first society of advanced insecurity in history. not just because it engenders... levels of lethal criminality incomparably greater than those prevailing in other postindustrial societies..., but in the sense that it has elevated insecurity as an organizing principle of collective life and a key mode of regulation of individual conduct..." (privilege as enjoying a social position outside this web of insecurity)

(122): 1/3 of the built environment in north lawndale are unsound/unfit for human habitation

(124): the US 'semi-welfare state'

(124): key--"this is to say that welfare recipients--who are forbidden to work for pay on pain of seeing this miserly aid withdrawn [in 1990, standard aid packaged in chicago fell 16% below survival threshold]--are sentenced to a long term of state poverty. by the same token, they are fated, whether they want it or not, to turn to the informal economy, legal and illegal, which has experienced spectacular development of late."

(126-127): wow; violence--"residents of the five african-american police districts in chicago... are eleven times more likely to be victims of violent crime than the... residents of the two white districts covering the north and south-west sectors of the city..."

(128): come on, what's the point of a hobbes citation?

(129-130): police corruption

chapter five, from conflation to comparison--how banleues and ghetto converge and contrast (135-162)

(135-136): critical--"...two profoundly different processes and scales on the two sides of the atlantic... [1] the cumulative incidence of segregation, poverty, isolation and violence assumes a wholly different intensity in the United States. [2] on the other hand, and this is the more crucial point, banlieues and ghettos are the legacies of different urban trajectories and arise from disparate criteria of classification and forms of social sorting: sorting operates first and foremost on the basis of class position... in the first case, and of ethnoracial membership in a historically pariah group... in the second. [3] finally, the french red belt and the american black belt have been the object of diametrically opposed political constructions and bureaucratic managements in the 1980s and 1990s. this is to say that the chasm that separates these two sociospatial constellations is not only of a quantitative order but pertains more fundamentally to the sociohistorical and institutional registers." [a place, clearly, to problematize the race/class confounding]

(137): "i wish above all to urge the utmost caution in the transatlantic transfer of concepts and theories pertaining to the articulation of racial domination, class inequality, and the structuration of space..."

(141): as in the US, linked in france, to "the relentless rise of unemployment and assorted forms of underemployment linked to the 'flexibilization' of the labor market..." [but he is pushing back against the equation in general, so this isn't to be taken out of context]

(145): "we will now demonstrate that such assimilation is in several respects fradulent, even dangerous. it proceeds simultaneously from ignorance about the black american ghetto and its historical trajectory (especially in the period following the civil rights revolution and the great riots of 1965-1968) and from an incomplete and incorrect diagnosis of the french working-class banlieues."

(145): noting, first, though that there are surface-level similarities (social morphology (145-147), and lived experience (147-150)

(146): remember--these areas have experienced de-population, not other way round

(147): between '68 and '84, la corurneuve lost 10,000 of 18,000 manual labor jobs. "ghetto and banlieue are thus both territories ravaged by deindustrialization."

(150): but this is all a "surface convergence..." there are five key differences:

1. disparate organizational ecologies (150-152): enormous difference in size, which expresses also the fact that the american ghetto really is a self-contained city, whereas the french banlieue is more of a 'residential island'
2. racial cloistering and uniformity, vs. ethnic dispersion (152-155): "whereas the popular banlieues of france are fundamentally pluri-ethnic zones where a multiplicity of nationalities rub elbows..., the US ghetto is totally homogeneous in ethnoracial terms..."
3. divergent rates and degrees of poverty (155-156)
   
4. criminality and dangerousness (156-158)
5. urban policy and the degredation of daily surroundings (158-160): "parlous state of housing stock and public infrastructure."
   

(150): interesting, gesturing towards reality/possiblity of a latino hyperghetto (this requires that we re-assess, no, the notion that ethnoracial domination is a cause?)

(152): wow--97 percent of black women marry black men, which is very different from the situation in france

(153): critical--"the ghetto is above all else a mechanism of racial confinement, an apparatus aimed at enclosing a stigmatized category in a reserved physical and social space that will prevent it from mixing with others and thus risk 'tainting' them..." [another excellent place to problematize race/class--this is the purpose of the ghetto!?]

(155): con't--"the confinement of blacks inside the ghetto is the expression of a racial dualism that cuts across the gamut of institutions of US society and is barely inflected as they climb up the class ladder: increasing education and income did not significantly lower the isolation of african americans from whites after the 1960s..."

(155): con't--"racial basis of their exclusion... explains why ghetto residents experience poverty rates and degrees of destitution with no equivalent in france..." [do we accept this? i think not--he is, again, confusing explanandum and explanans. or, rather, he's caught in a tautology--what's your evidence for racial exclusion. segregation. what's your explanation for segregation? racial exclusion. and on, and on, and on]

(159-160): important--in france, a different, more meaningful attempt at state support for these communities--"bear[s] witness to a collective will and sense of political responsibility that is diametrically opposed to the attitude of 'benign neglect' adopted by the american authorities..."

(161): important--admits "the historical specificity of the ethnoracial division of US society..." [about this there's no disagreement, just about the work we can make this do--i.e., does it take on a life of it's own, essentially]

chapter six, stigma and division, from the core of chicago to the margins of paris (163-197)

(163): the 'new poverty' and its contours--"all of these phenomena can be observed, to varying degrees, in nearly all advanced societies."

(166): purpose here is to evaluate the thesis of "transatlantic convergence" through a cross-national comparison

(168): again--"to simplify: relegation operates on the basis of ethnoracial membership reinforced by both social class and state in the fin-de-siecle black belt, whereas it proceeds principally on the basis of class and is partly mitigated by public policy in the red belt."

(169): important--'public taint', following bourdeiu, which "allows us to identify the main factors accounting for the muted social potency of ethnoracial categorization in the red belt..." [this is interesting--must follow this to make the c-arg complete]

(171): i am not following this claim, though--what does it mean for joblessness to produce 'taint'? discrimination on the basis of address, association. [but let's be careful to understand this as consequence, as 'ideology'...]

(179): important--talking about a triple disjuncture between objective conditions and this ideology of intolerance--reasons it 'weighs more heavily in france, than in US'

1. in france, institutionalized social inferiority stands in violation of french notions of unitary citizensihp; much more acceptable to americans
2. US has much more individualistic conception of causation (no one being penalized, really)
3. "a third and perhaps the most crucial difference between Red Belt and Black Belt relates to the nature of the stigma they carry: this stigma is essentially residential in the former but jointly and inseparably spatial-cum-racial in the latter." [ok, this is perfect place to tease out the shortcomings of this distinction--so clearly this is a consequence of the way in which these communities have formed, not a cause of their distinctive formation]
   

(182): critical place to question--ghetto as a "specifically racial formation"--"designed to encase a bounded category that has spawned a society-wide web of material and symbolic associations between colour, place, and a host of negatively valued social properties."

(184): and here, too--"negative representations and sociofugal practices then become articulated to set off a deadly self-fulfilling prophecy through which public taint and collective dishonour end up producing that which they claim merely to record: namely, social atomism, community 'disorganization' and cultural anomie."

(185): preliminary response--i suppose my position would simply be that the more theoretically coherent claim is to suggest that their homogeneity explains the severity of ethnoracial domination, rather than ethnoracial domination explains their homogeneity--and then the task is to understand homogeneity (and through that, one can understand ethnoracial domination, too)

(186): seeing 'race' everywhere in the ghetto--in the 'objectivity' of space?

(188): he is saying in france you have a perception that is youths arrayed against society, rather than it being racialized (but insofar as he is being descriptive, ok; insofar as he is appealing to folk concepts, he is forcing himself to ignore possible paths toward 'racialization'?...)

(190): noting racism in a british working-class town -- well what of american exceptionality, then?

(193): key, explaining lack of this ethnoracial notion in france--not just (1) the comparatively heterogeneous character of the Red Belt, but (2) also the notion that ethnic difference is not a legitimate idiom in the french state [are we sure that this can do the work we want it to? how can you perform a notwithstanding le pen?], and (3) the notion that there is much more assimilation going on in these areas than in the US.

(196): argument that in france, the social schism between these communities and the working-class is narrowing, whereas in the US it is getting greater and greater...

(198): "racial separation... radicalizes the objective and subjective reality of urban exclusion..."

My point is not that anti-racism and anti-sexism are not good things. It is rather that they currently have nothing to do with left-wing politics, and that, insofar as they function as a substitute for it, can be a bad thing. American universities are exemplary here: they are less racist and sexist than they were 40 years ago and at the same time more elitist. The one serves as an alibi for the other: when you ask them for more equality, what they give you is more diversity. The neoliberal heart leaps up at the sound of glass ceilings shattering and at the sight of doctors, lawyers and professors of colour taking their place in the upper middle class. Whence the many corporations which pursue diversity almost as enthusiastically as they pursue profits, and proclaim over and over again not only that the two are compatible but that they have a causal connection – that diversity is good for business. But a diversified elite is not made any the less elite by its diversity and, as a response to the demand for equality, far from being left-wing politics, it is right-wing politics.

With more than 150,000 inmates, the California prison system is one of the most crowded in the nation, with many of its facilities holding more than double the number of inmates they were designed for. A federal three-judge panel ruled last week that crowding and poor health care caused one avoidable inmate death each week and that the system was “impossible to manage.”

What makes Malcolm different from every signature Black figure in American history is that he combines the two central characters of Black folk culture. He is both the trickster and the minister. He’s both. That’s “Detroit Red”—the hustler, the gambler, the outlaw. And, he is also the minister who saves souls, who redeems lives, who heals the sick, who raises the dead. He’s both. King is one. Jesse Jackson is one. Malcolm’s both and he understood the streets and the lumpen proletariat. I hate that phrase, but it comes from Marx. As well as, he saw himself as a minister and an Amun, a cleric. He was always this. And he embodied the cultural spirit of Black folk better than anyone else. When I asked one student about a decade ago, “What was the fundamental difference between Malcolm and Martin?” He said, “Dr. Marable, that’s easy. Martin Luther King, Jr., belongs to the entire world. Malcolm X belongs to us.”

lecture 4, "a northern world view: yankee society, antislavery ideology..."
david blight

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from a northern point of view, how do we get to this passage? story of a yale college junior, abolitionist, who enlisted in the first regiment he could get into--the sixth new york cavalry. had denounced the gov't he's serving in 1861 and 1862 for its failure to explicitly make the war a war against slavery. by march 1863, he had concluded that emancipation would indeed be achieved by the war (january 1863 is the emancipation proclamation). killed in april 1865, in the last major engagement of the civil war.

how do you get to this man? bright, connected-enough--but he gave it all up for a cause he saw more worthy. and if, in general, you can come to understand white, young, Northern, Yankee, Anglo-Saxon fighters, who believed strongly in the War of 1861 (and who, despite racism in the North against immigrants and African-Americans, eventually supported a war that came to be waged on slavery).

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if the South was a slave society, the North was a market society--booming by the 1820s/1830s/1840s (this began, even, in the late 18th century). this booming commercial, consumerist society with its faith and defense in free labor--that ideology would be something that a lot of white Southerners would actually fear.

a time of roads, railroads, technological innovation--1800/1810/1820, you can actually find, in the North, a fear of technology.

the "market revolution", of course, was driven by the growth of cities, which became centers of economic activity. it's that time when 18th century subsistence farmers (who engaged in "mixed agriculture", growing all kinds of foodstuffs for themselves) gave way to commercial farmers producing for a much larger market (cities on the East coast, and even a global market). it's a time when the home and farm became their own domestic factory--the vast majority were still farmers, but they began to buy things on the market (from a peddler, or a store in town).

this all, of course, leads to a change in "mentalitites"--brought about fundamental alterations in aspirations, habits, activities, in conceptions and definitions of work and leisure. it would fundamentally change the conception of a "laborer"--becoming part of a collective force, put into opposition against Capital and manufacture.

there's a habit in the US to think that the idea of "individual rights" began with the Bill of Rights--but this got profoundly shaped by the "market revolution"

it's going to change the idea of mobility, where you can go and how.

and--this is crucial--it's going to change, for Northern people (and immigrants), people's conception about what they can give their children. the idea that if labor is left free, the small guy has a chance--rooted in "free labor" ideology is this idea of social mobility. especially in a society that had this thing called "the West."

even such American concepts as "self-reliance" is changed by the Market revolution--people keep seeing evidence that shows them that, in the face of the market, their individualism is not so powerful.

the level of ideas, thinking, and common behaviour, would bring about a combination of tremendous, broad optimism (possibly like we've never experienced since), simultaneous to a certain sense of anxiety/dread/despair. it will lead to great wealth (fortunes in railroads by the 1840s and 1850s, and the textile industry, and on Wall Street), but, also, inequality will grow.

the workplace would become less personal, as factories emerged. women went to work, most famously in Lowell factories in MA. for the first time, in significant numbers, young girls and young women left the realm of domesticity.

the market revolution would also lead to environmental degradation--people worried a lot about the destruction of natural habitats (rivers, etc.)

it came, also, with boom and bust cycles--a crisis in 1837, and in 1857 (which would play a part in the story of the Civil War).

even the idea of what a child is (of childhood), and the family, undergoes a revolution in 20 or 30 years. by the 30s and 40s in an immigrant family, a child meant a wage. in the growing middle-class of course, there was a more modern definition of childhood--the child was to be a protected youth. "parenting", as moral guardianship.

the market revolution was a tremendous engine for the idea of "progress"--America was growing, and it was now going to be the nation of "progress". it looked like it could expand, forever. as walt whitman wrote, in poem after poem, America would be the beginning of a "new man". a new start for humankind.

AND: "if you come to believe we are the hope for humankind--we are "progress", and our creed is written down in the constitution--what have you done? you've said, we are really special, and we are really important, and we are really good. you've kind of set yourself up, haven't you?" the doctrine of progress, prof is arguing, has always bred its contradictions.

1820s New York, 1820s/1830s Philadelphia, 1850s Chicago (railroad capital of the world).

part of the change to the North, of course, was immigration--in the 1830s, 600,000 immigrants came to the US, almost all from western Europe. in the 1840s, 1.5 million. in the 1850s, almost 3 million more. by 1852/1853, Boston and New York had 50% foreign-born populations. it's close to this in Philadelphia.

all this, of course, was fueled by the transport revolution. the eerie canal, which was profitable from 1820-1880s. 300 such canals built in the 1850s. steamboats became the romantic symbol of this revolution (though they too brought dread; 1/3 of all steamboats built in the 1850s, exploded!).

and then, of course, railroads--no continent, you could argue, had ever been as ready-made as the US for railroads. they revolutionized an American sense of time, ability to travel, manufacturing--and it made Chicago, Chicago. it made the first multimillionaires, the first great fortunes. and it became a great example of the relationship between the Federal Government and Business--they were built, by and large, by government subsidies, and a tremendous amount of corruption. had a lot to do with linking northeast with northwest, which created a certain sense of isolation in the South.

and, at this time, we can identify also the idea of manifest destiny--which prof is calling an inherently white supremacist idea, that was a part of American culture from the outset. the idea that we have to expand, colonize, and civilize this continent.

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NOW, in any society changing this much, this fast (doubling its population, in 20 years; if the rate of population growth from 1820-1850 had been sustained, over time, we'd have today roughly 1.5 billion people in the US), both reform/change and anxiety are inevitable.

four major reform periods of American history (a period in which people became professional reformers; whole movements, magazines, etc.), in prof's opinion. the first is this era, 1820s-1850s, ante-bellum America (emphasized most obviously by the anti-slavery movement). the second great era is the progressive era, a great response to urbanization/industrialization/immigration. the third is, in all likelihood, the New Deal (incredible emergency/crises over question of what government owes its people, etc.). the fourth is the 60s--civil rights movement, vietnam war, etc.

in Am. history, reform crusades have had to do with one of several objects/purposes/problems.

the first is the industrializing process: we've been leaving the history of this reform ever since our first market revolution.

the second is racial equality: and we're still having that reform movement.

the third is gender equality.

the fourth is peace.

the fifth kind of American reform is religious and individual morality--and here it takes on some distinctly American characteristics.

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to be anti-slavery in America by the 1820s and 1830s was to face a host of barriers: sanctity of US constitution, depth of pro-slavery argument. abolitionists did not believe they would see the end of slavery in their lifetime.

and last point: one of the barriers for an anti-slavery activist, whatever your reasons, is the simple fact that the United States was a republic, and that the sides that owned those slaves, their leaders were free to defend their system. they were free to dissent--they were republicans (small R), as well. the greatest tragedy of American history, perhaps, is that this struggle could not be resolved politically.

lecture 3, "a southern world-view: the old south and proslavery ideology"
david blight

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in a speech before the Virginia secession convention in late-April 1861, the newly-elected, vice-president of the confederacy Alexander Stevens (a slave-holder) argues that the cornerstone of their movement/their freedom was "American Negro slavery." ("as a race, the African is inferior to the white man... he is not equal to the white man... and cannot be made so by the actions of humankind.")

you always have to worry, in history, when people begin to invoke "Nature"

but how do we get to 1861, and Alexander Stevens declaring that it's all about slavery?

today, then, the Southern defense of slavery (and its evolution).

(of course, what caused this war, remains a question--it cannot be "soundbyted" away.)

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professor is relating de Tocqueville's account of the "indolent" South. (the enervating effects of slavery on the society, etc. -- his own aristocratic complexes shining through.) "you see few churches and no schools." not accurate, in his estimations of Southern stagnation. but he did predict the Northern domination of the South. ("Man is not made for servitude").

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in the South, what developed was one of the world's true "slave societies." what does this mean?

essentially, any society where the relationship between ownership and labor is defined by slavery--where slavery affected everything about social relations in society (where people were socialized by it, married/reared children, and conceived of the idea of property around the institution). other slave societies in human history (controversial this), were Ancient Greece and Rome, Brazil (by 18th and 19th century), the whole of the Carribbean (the West Indies sugar-producing empires of the Dutch, French, British, Spanish, etc.), and the American South.

there were other, localized slave societies, to be sure. particularly in Africa, even before the Europeans arrived (though really consolidated after the regularization of the Atlantic slave trade). East Africa, in the Muslim world (well before Atlantic slave trade, actually).

BUT: the five "great" slave societies were the above. All were enormously profitable. Technological innovation was generally slow (cheap value of labor). High ratio of slaves to free-people. In those societies, slaves as an interest were both a political and great, economic institution--one which defined regular ways of life.

When exactly did the American South become a slave society. Circa 1820, perhaps. Or maybe even more the 1830s, when you have booming cotton crop. Or in the aftermath of the Mexican War. Prof is arguing, surely by the early part of this period.

One aspect of that slave society is that, as Americans ended the foreign slave trade (in 1808, remember, though it didn't entirely end--there were some people in Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana still wanted to reopen it up until the 1850s). as the foreign trade was closed off, for a variety of reasons, the domestic American slave trade absolutely boomed. one of the reasons that the cotton boom could be the cotton boom, prof is arguing, was because one of the unique features of N. American slavery, it was the only slave society in the New World where the slaves naturally reproduced themselves (Brazil managed it, a bit)--this has to do with climate, sex ratio, diet, and movement. (prof emphasizing the latter--the "safety valve" of the West, to move to)

between 1810 and 1820 alone, 137,000 American slaves were forced from N. Carolina and Chesapeake States to move to Alabama, Missisippi.

from 1820 to 1860, roughly 2,000,000 American slaves were sold to satisfy the need of slave labor in the great cotton kingdom of the growing south-west. roughly 2/3 of those 2,000,000 slaves moved from the North/East to the south-west--outright sale. a massive, huge American business.

by the 1830s, there were over 100 men in Charleston, SC making their livings, full-time, as slave traders. many of them owned their own "shops." other cities became major ports--Richmond, Virginia, for example (2-3 major, full-time slave traders--slave, auction-house jail, and kept exact account books). One trader, Hector Davis, made about $120,000 in a week!

the South, in this sense, was part of a Western movement. for slave children, between 1820 and 1860, living in the Upper South or Eastern Seaboard, they had a 30% chance of being sold, outright, away from their parents, before the age of 10.

ads in newspaper would read: "Negros wanted... good front teeth" (book on this: Walter Johnson, "Soul by Soul"). amazing to read the language/letters of slave traders: the complacency, pure racism, business-language on the other.

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how was slavery defended, then? (and how did the pro-slavery argument develop? and who made them?)

best way to begin, prof is saying, whether in the early defenses of the 1820s, or later, is within the framework of a deeply conservative, organic world-view; a Burkean conservatism--a set of beliefs that says the world is ordered as it is, for reasons. and that human beings ought not to tinker with that order--a set of beliefs in the sustenance of the social order as it was. that people were conceived, by God/Evolution, in line with a certain order--some born to do this, others born to do that (it's "natural"). an obsession with "stability"--the threat of upsetting the social order. bound up with notions of "honor" and "duty"--respect for "tradition."

white, Southern defenders of slavery were, in some respects, products of the Enlightenment--some of them come to really believe in the intellect, in the "power of reason" to figure out the Universe (but, figure it out in different ways). you can be a product of Enlightenment, and still be profoundly conservative. deep, organic forms of conservatism are not antithetical to the Enlightenment, at least not entirely.

many of pro-slavery ideologues will argue that ideas of liberty/freedom, which they constantly referred to, were never absolute. many of them would directly reverse Thomas Jefferson's declaration will argue that "no one is born equal"--many of them would argue that "freedom" must always be balanced with "order and tradition." with the world as it is, not as it ought to be.

southern pro-slavery arguments were much more likely to stress "duty" than to discuss individual "liberty."

edward brown: "slavery" had been the stepping-ladder by which nations had passed from "barbarism" to "civilization"--that slavery was a way in which you built an economy, which would be propserous and benefit those who "mattered."

pro-slavery writers had, in many ways, a fundamentally different conception of how history happened than northern writers (even abraham lincoln--"never a real abolitionist, but at least grew up with anti-slavery in his heart").

categories of the pro-slavery argument:

(a) the biblical: almost all pro-slavery writers would dip into the Old or New Testament--every society has had it, it's always been around. you can read some prophets as justifiying it, thereby concluding that it was divinely sanctioned. (of course it can breath anti-slavery, as well)

(b) the historical: not just the venerability of slavery, but that it has been crucial to the development of all great civilizations. it has been the engine of wealth, of greatness, etc. how would you have had cicero? how would you have had the playrights of greece, etc.? at the base of all societies there has to be a labor system.

(c) natural rights: both part of and resistance to the "greatest product" of the Enlightenment--the idea of rights from birth, rights from God. being born with certain capacities. pro-slavery writers used this, stripping it of its universalism--the real rule of the world is not "natural equality", but "natural inequality."

(d) economic arguments: the cynic, of course, goes straight here--one of the greatest of these writers was James Henry Hammond, who had plenty of mixed-race children. he was the epitomy of pro-slavery activism--ultimately his argument was that it was amoral. a property defense of the institution: roughly, the means by which African-Americans have been made our property are irrelevant--they are our property, and our right to them is sacrosanct. this, in particular, was a "potent" argument, says prof--"it is what it is, deal with it."

(e) some would get guilty/worried, and defend it as a "necessary evil" (and some of these folk were deeply sincere). one man to his fiance: "i am undecided whether i ought to hold slaves... it is unjust... but the question is, in my present circumstances, would the general interest of the slaves be promoted best by emancipation?" (develops a theory of how he will emancipate blacks, within the institution itself).

(f) the racial defense: cf. Alexander Stevens' speech--but all of them went here, and one time or another. George Fitz-Hugh, of course, famously made this case: "the Negro is but a grown-up child... some men are born with saddles on their backs, and others with boots/spurs"

(g) utopian slavery: Henry Hughes, "one strange duck"--a loner who wrote an amazing diary. "Warrenteeism"--he argued that slaves were charges put into the world who were there for slaveholders to protect/take care of. he wanted a strong central state to perfect the slave into a perfect worker. he was also obsessed with racial purity--any intermixing would destroy the master race. he wasn't that widely read, prof admits; but it shows us how far pro-slavery could ultimate good. it wasn't only a positive good, but it was perfection.

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all of that is only to argue that there was a deep, abiding, well-rehearsed defense of slavery. and if you want to understand why so many white Southerners went to such great extents to save their society, you need look no further than these arguments and sentiments.

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a few final comments, which come at the beginning of lecture 4--when slaveholding politicians begin to organize toward some sort of secession, over this slave society they want to protect, they are writing hundreds and hundreds of pages in defense of their world. pro-slavery anthologies, etc. also, this wasn't all about "abstract" ideology--in 1857, francis ellen watkins harper, said, in the wake of the dred scott decision, "if men had not found out a fearful alchemy by which this blood can be transformed into gold..."

India’s majoritarian fascists, represented in Parliament by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), are in a blue funk. The findings of the “Prime Ministers’ High Level Committee” (set up on March 9, 2005) headed by the former Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Justice Rajindar Sachar, have in its Report submitted to Parliament on November 30, 2006 nailed the long-touted Right-wing disinformation about Indian Muslims as a skein of lies.

stop trying to 'save' africa:"Don't you want to help us save Africa?" she yelled.
(...) Such campaigns, however well intentioned, promote the stereotype of Africa as a black hole of disease and death. News reports constantly focus on the continent's corrupt leaders, warlords, "tribal" conflicts, child laborers, and women disfigured by abuse and genital mutilation. These descriptions run under headlines like "Can Bono Save Africa?" or "Will Brangelina Save Africa?" The relationship between the West and Africa is no longer based on openly racist beliefs, but such articles are reminiscent of reports from the heyday of European colonialism, when missionaries were sent to Africa to introduce us to education, Jesus Christ and "civilization."
(...) Why do the media frequently refer to African countries as having been "granted independence from their colonial masters," as opposed to having fought and shed blood for their freedom? Why do Angelina Jolie and Bono receive overwhelming attention for their work in Africa while Nwankwo Kanu or Dikembe Mutombo, Africans both, are hardly ever mentioned? How is it that a former mid-level U.S. diplomat receives more attention for his cowboy antics in Sudan than do the numerous African Union countries that have sent food and troops and spent countless hours trying to negotiate a settlement among all parties in that crisis?
(...) Last month the Group of Eight industrialized nations and a host of celebrities met in Germany to discuss, among other things, how to save Africa. Before the next such summit, I hope people will realize Africa doesn't want to be saved. Africa wants the world to acknowledge that through fair partnerships with other members of the global community, we ourselves are capable of unprecedented growth.

assimilation is a double-edged sword for immigrants:
Italian, Polish, and Jewish immigrants may not have identified with, or been accepted into, white society when they first arrived in the United States. But they, or more often their children, assimilated by becoming "white" and experienced upward mobility as they melded into the white majority. And part of the assimilation into whiteness meant the adoption of white racial attitudes.
(...) For immigrants of color, assimilation means something very different than it historically has for European immigrants. For Latin American immigrants, assimilation more often means shedding their American dream and joining the lowest rungs in a caste-like society where Native Americans and African Americans, the most "assimilated" people of color, have been consistently kept at the bottom. When Haitian immigrants assimilate, explains one study, "they become not generic, mainstream Americans but specifically African Americans and primarily the poor African Americans most vulnerable to American racism."

put away the flags:
On this July 4, we would do well to renounce nationalism and all its symbols: its flags, its pledges of allegiance, its anthems, its insistence in song that God must single out America to be blessed. Is not nationalism -- that devotion to a flag, an anthem, a boundary so fierce it engenders mass murder -- one of the great evils of our time, along with racism, along with religious hatred?
(...) Our citizenry has been brought up to see our nation as different from others, an exception in the world, uniquely moral, expanding into other lands in order to bring civilization, liberty, democracy.
(...) On the eve of the Mexican War, an American journalist declared it our "Manifest Destiny to overspread the continent allotted by Providence." After the invasion of Mexico began, The New York Herald announced: "We believe it is a part of our destiny to civilize that beautiful country."
(...) We invaded Cuba in 1898 to liberate the Cubans, and went to war in the Philippines shortly after, as President McKinley put it, "to civilize and Christianize" the Filipino people.
(...) One of the effects of nationalist thinking is a loss of a sense of proportion. The killing of 2,300 people at Pearl Harbor becomes the justification for killing 240,000 in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The killing of 3,000 people on Sept. 11 becomes the justification for killing tens of thousands of people in Afghanistan and Iraq.
(...) We need to refute the idea that our nation is different from, morally superior to, the other imperial powers of world history. We need to assert our allegiance to the human race, and not to any one nation.

injustice in jena as nooses hang from the "white tree":
In a small still mostly segregated section of rural Louisiana, an all white jury heard a series of white witnesses called by a white prosecutor testify in a courtroom overseen by a white judge in a trial of a fight at the local high school where a white student who had been making racial taunts was hit by black students. The fight was the culmination of a series of racial incidents starting when whites responded to black students sitting under the “white tree” at their school by hanging three nooses from the tree. The white jury and white prosecutor and all white supporters of the white victim were all on one side of the courtroom. The black defendant, 17 year old Mychal Bell, and his supporters were on the other. The jury quickly convicted Mychal Bell of two felonies - aggravated battery and conspiracy to commit aggravated battery. Bell, who was a 16 year old sophomore football star at the time he was arrested, faces up to 22 years in prison. Five other black youths await similar trials on attempted second degree murder and conspiracy charges.

choices for black labor:
As we enter the 21st century, Black labor is in disarray. Within the ranks of organized labor, the various institutions that have often spoken on its behalf have ossified. Black caucuses in various unions have stepped back from challenging and pushing the union leaderships and instead have in all too many cases degenerated into social clubs or step-ladders for individuals to get positions in the union structure.
(...) Suffice to say that the economic crisis affecting Black America, a crisis that became very evident in the mid-1970s, cut the ground underneath a major portion of the Black working class. Combined with political attacks on Black America by the Right, we went on the defensive. In organized labor, the declining percentage of workers organized in unions, along with the brutal climate built up during the Ronald Reagan years, worsened the conditions under which struggle could take place.
(...) Yet in my humble opinion what was particularly lost by Black labor leaders was vision. The vision that was articulated beginning in the 1930s with the growth of the National Negro Congress and the Congress of Industrial Organizations, and advanced in the 1950s with the National Negro Labor Council and, later, by the A. Philip Randolph-led Negro American Labor Council, and in the 1970s with the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, justifiably emphasized the inclusion of Black workers at all levels of the union movement.
(...) Nationally, the prevailing emphasis, even among many younger activists, is on individual solutions to problems that are mainly collective. Within the Black working class there is a less of a sense that unions are the instruments to deal with the larger problems facing Black America. This does not mean that unions are disregarded, but it does mean that there is little sense that they can or do have an expansive role.
(...) Gaining considerable attention over the last few years has been the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment within Black America, including within the Black working class. The fact that much of this sentiment has been actively fueled by white, right-wing anti-immigrant groups is secondary to the fact that the fear of competition and displacement on the part of the Black working class has made it susceptible to ‘nativist’ arguments. Black labor leadership has, for the most part, failed to engage and rigorously challenge this sentiment with much more than platitudes. As the Black working class faces continued battering, the immigrant—documented and/or undocumented—becomes, for many, the target of convenience for our anger. Rather than understanding the nature of the problem we face as lying within capitalism itself and the search by business for cheaper and more vulnerable workforces, the immigrant becomes the safe and convenient enemy of the moment.
(...) Black labor has historically played an interesting role, something akin to the irritant in the oyster that brings forward a pearl. Whether we organized independent unions when we were refused entry into the American Federation of Labor, or when we and Chicanos became decisive supporters of a new labor movement, as in the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 1930s and 1940s, Black labor has little history of passivity. The time has come for Black labor to step back into that role of irritant to the oyster, but with a 21st century frame of reference.
(...) To this should be added that the Black Freedom Movement has nearly always been an essential ally for other efforts to expand democracy and oppose injustice and inequality. This core—the fight for consistent democracy/opposition to injustice and inequality—must remain the guiding principles for Black labor and its challenge to organized labor today. The implications are quite profound in that what is being asked of Black labor—as a contingent of both organized labor and the Black Freedom Movement—is to push for a reconstructed and redefined labor movement that is emphasizing social transformation.
(...) Jobs do not necessarily begin high-wage. They can, however, become high wage through worker organization. This means that organized labor must have a program to organize economically depressed regions—such as our central cities—to transform the jobs. This, again, becomes a community affair.

the glorious imperial legacy of the papacy and the catholic church:
There are three bulls (edicts, or executive orders, if you will) issued by the Papacy with which we should concern ourselves. The Dum Diversas, issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1452, authorized King Alfonso V of Portugal to reduce any "Saracens (Muslims) and pagans and any other unbelievers" to perpetual slavery, thereby ushering in the West African slave trade.
(...) The Romanus Pontifex, also issued by Pope Nicholas V in 1455, sanctioned the seizure of non-Christian lands, and encouraged the enslavement of non-Christian people in Africa and the Americas. Specifically, it gave the green light to "invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed," all for profit, and in the name of Jesus Christ.
(...) The Inter Caetera, signed by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, states, "... we (the Papacy) command you (Spain) ... to instruct the aforesaid inhabitants and residents and dwellers therein in the Catholic faith, and train them in good morals." This papal law sanctioned and paved the way for European colonization and Catholic missions in the New World.
(...) These three edicts opened the floodgates for everything that followed, the raping, pillaging, kidnapping, genocide and enslavement of millions. They established the groundwork for the global slave trade of the 15th and 16th centuries, and the Age of Imperialism.
(...) In Brazil, Pentecostalismism is on the rise. There have been efforts to incorporate African rites and drums into Catholic services, in an effort to become more dynamic and more relevant. Yet, in the most African nation outside of Africa, and the world's largest Roman Catholic nation, there are only 11 Black bishops out of 400.
(...) This school of theology, which focuses on social justice and political activism for the poor, challenges people in high places, and views Jesus as liberator of the oppressed, is rejected by the Vatican. In fact, Pope Benedict has devoted his career to eradicating liberation theology and its supporters, which he rejects as Marxist-inspired, and "a threat to the faith of the church."
(...) What we are witnessing is the ancient struggle between imperial religion—the arrogant manipulation of God to endorse the powerful, protect the rich and maintain the status quo—and the use of faith as a force for social change. Look at the Christian Right's endorsement of Bush as "God's President," as he presides over the largest transfer of wealth in the nation's history, turns his back on New Orleans, appoints Christian Right attorneys to suppress the voting rights of African Americans, and sponsors the carnage taking place in Iraq. And on the other hand, remember Gandhi, who used Hindu spirituality and civil disobedience to liberate India from the British Empire. Remember Dr. King, who condemned Jim Crow segregation, poverty at home and an immoral war in Vietnam, as conservative Christians met him with brutality and death threats and moderate Christian clergy urged him to slow down. This is nothing new.

racism and white supremacy:
So, for instance, in the wake of the Virginia Tech shootings (which certain liberals also exploited, as a way to ramp up their rather simplistic, if still justifiable calls for gun control), racists were using the catastrophe as evidence of why America needed to be an all-white nation. On the message board of American Renaissance - the nation's leading "highbrow" white supremacist website, which prides itself on its academic and pseudo-scholarly tone - one could read any number of racist comments in the wake of the shootings. Among them, one writer noted, "This sad incident goes to prove that non-whites, whether they be Asians, blacks, Arabs, Polynesians or Mexicans are completely unfit for life in white societies and all should be deported forthwith."
(...) Another, echoing that theme (and ignoring the fact that over ninety percent of white women who are murdered are murdered by white men), noted that the incident proved whites should only date members of their own race, because they are "much less likely to carry their emotions to extremes."
(...) Research has found that local news (which is the source most of us rely on for crime information) over-represents blacks as offenders, relative to their share of crimes committed, and over-represents whites as victims, relative to the white share of actual crime victims. Furthermore, on both a local and national level, media tends to give more attention to violent crimes committed by blacks against whites than the reverse.
(...) There are typically between 12-15,000 homicides each year in the Unites States, and only a few become fodder for national coverage. Of these, about 1200-1400 or so are interracial (with only a few of these being apparently motivated by racial bias). Of the interracial homicides, anywhere from 300 to 400 of these involve white killers and black victims, (Homicide Trends, FBI). But very few of these get national coverage, contrary to the claims of the racists. James Byrd is actually the exception, not the rule, so conjuring his case as evidence that the media cares more about black victims when victimized by whites than vice-versa, proves nothing. The year that Byrd was dragged to death there were 363 blacks killed by whites in America, and the other 362 of them have names that are known to virtually no one but their families.*
(...) Websites like American Renaissance, and neo-Nazis like David Duke regularly report on any such crime they learn of, anywhere in the country, even when there is no apparent racial motivation for the incident, as if to say "see, we told you so - these people are a threat to whites everywhere!" In other words, the criminal acts of a small handful of blacks come to represent blackness in the minds of weak-minded persons, the likes of whom are attracted to such sites and organizations. Lacking the ability to think critically, racists assume that the roughly 5000 blacks who commit murder each year, do so because they're black, which leaves one to wonder what it is about the other 35 million or so, also black, who don't?
(...) Only about two percent (at most) of African Americans will commit a violent crime in a given year, meaning that blacks who commit crime, by definition are not typical within the black community. Likewise, the fact that whites commit the vast majority of serial murders, and are responsible for case after case of corporate misconduct hardly indicates some genetic predisposition to these types of crime either. Not that white supremacists would ever think to make that connection of course, or to draw any conclusions about whites as a group, based on the acts of a small sample of our community.

abunimah on the 40-yr anniversary:
This sums up the cherished mythology of what is still called the Israeli left and much of the international peace process industry -- that prior to the 1967 war, Israel was pure and on the right path. Had it not "become an occupier" the region would have had a happier history and Israel would be an accepted member of the international community rather than a pariah wearing the "apartheid" label.
(...) The exclusive focus on the occupation serves increasingly to obscure that the conflict in Palestine is at its core a colonial struggle whose boundaries do not conveniently coincide with the lines of June 4, 1967.
(...) the settlements in Gaza and the West Bank built after 1967 are not morally different from towns and kibbutzim inside Israel's pre-1967 borders. The Israel that was created in 1948 was established on land violently expropriated from ethnically-cleansed Palestinians.
(...) There is an Israeli consensus that it is legitimate to defend the Jewish state against the so-called "demographic threat" from Palestinians who will be again, as they were prior to 1948, the majority population group in Palestine-Israel despite six decades of Israeli efforts to reduce their numbers with expulsions, massacres and administrative ethnic cleansing. It is the imperative to gerrymander an enclave with a Jewish majority rather than any recognition of Palestinian equality that underpins whatever limited rhetorical Israeli support exists for a Palestinian state.
(...) Demanding an end to the occupation only so Israel can continue to function as a racist ethnocracy within "recognized borders" is not a progressive position any more than supporting apartheid South Africa's bantustans would have been.
(...) We must simultaneously demand the abolition of all racist laws throughout the country, including those allowing foreign Jews to immigrate while Palestinians are kept out, as well as discrimination in land allocation, housing, education and the economy.
(...) We must recast the struggle as one for democracy and equal rights for all the people who live in the country. This involves two kinds of work: solidarity in the form of boycott, divestment and sanctions against the Israeli apartheid system in all its disguises, and the articulation of a vision of a shared future inspired by the values of the peace settlements in Northern Ireland and South Africa.

katrina and common ground:
A full year after Hurricane Katrina, 73,000 New Orleans residents remained encamped in FEMA trailer parks, an aluminum gulag spread all the way to Texas. They were waiting for a chance to reconstruct their homes. They’re still waiting. There’s little or no insurance money, and no one is even allowed to rebuild, nearly two years after the flood, in some of the poorer areas like the Lower Ninth Ward.
(...) The water was still high when Rahim helped create a guerrilla reconstruction corps of local residents. They call themselves Common Ground. When you see progress in the poor sections of New Orleans, you’re often seeing the group’s work crews.
(...)But Rahim and crew are far from defeated. Their call for the residents to take control of their city and their future was not about real estate nor even compensation. It was about teaching self-respect, self-empowerment, and self-defense, the only weapons left to the moneyless in a class war in which one front is New Orleans and another the closing Chrysler plants in Michigan. The battle is now political, as Rahim takes Common Ground’s case and story nationwide. For them, the insurgency has just begun.

race relations in louisiana:
It began in Jena's high school last August when Kenneth Purvis asked the headteacher if black students could break with a long-held tradition and join the whites who sit under the tree in the school courtyard during breaks. The boy was told that he and his friends could sit where they liked.
(...) To us those nooses meant the KKK [Ku Klux Klan], they meant, "Niggers, we're going to kill you, we're going to hang you till you die,"' says Caseptla Bailey, a black community leader and mother of one of the accused. The three white perpetrators of what was seen as a race hate crime were given 'in-school' suspensions (sent to another school for a few days before returning).
(...) Bailey, 56, is a former air force officer and holder of a business management degree. 'I couldn't even get a job in Jena as a bank teller,' she said. 'Look at the banks and the best white-collar jobs and you'll see only white and red necks in those collars.'
(...) Billy Doughty, the local barber, has never cut black men's hair. 'They just don't come here,' he mumbled. 'Anyway, their hair is different and difficult to cut.'
(...) The majority of blacks live in an area known as Ward 10. Many homes are trailers, or wooden shacks. Rubbish lies in the streets. On 'Snob Hill', where the whites live, the spacious gardens and lawns are trimmed, the gravelled drives boast SUVs and nice new saloons. Only two black families live there. A teacher from Jena High had enough money to buy his way in. But when he arrived local estate agents refused to show him a 'white' property even though several were advertised in the local paper ('they're all under contract,' the agents lied). The teacher eventually went to see one white owner and offered him cash. 'The guy preferred green [dollars] to black, so I got the property,' laughed the teacher, 'but since we moved in three years ago we haven't been invited by a single neighbour.'
(...) That same weekend race fights between teenagers broke out downtown, and on 4 December racial tension boiled over once more in the school. A white student, Justin Barker, was attacked, allegedly by six black students. The expected charges of assault and battery were not laid, and the six were charged with attempted second-degree murder and conspiracy to commit second-degree murder. They now face a lifetime in jail.

nyt on israel and palestine:
Moyers’ analysis of the US media failure on Iraq was valuable, yet incomplete. He explained that to launch the attack on Iraq “high officials… needed a compliant press, to pass on their propaganda as news and cheer them on.... our press largely surrendered its independence and skepticism to join with our government in marching to war.” Bob Simon of CBS explained to Moyers that the administration used marketing techniques to sell the war, “Just repeat it and repeat it and repeat it… Keep that drum beat going.” Media critic Norman Solomon told Moyers, “I think these [news] executives were terrified of being called soft on terrorism.” Moyers gave numerous examples of The New York Times passing on bogus intelligence on Iraq to the US public. Michael Massing of the Columbia Journalism Review highlighted the Times central role in marketing the Iraq war, saying: “The New York Times…remainsimmensely influential. People in the TV world read it every morning... People in government-- of course read it, think tanks, and so on.”
(...) Moyers omitted a crucial reason for why the government’s case for war resonated with both the US media and public. It was based in widely held stereotypes about Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East, assumptions which are also essential to understanding US policy in Israel and Palestine. In his classic 1978 book “Orientalism”, Palestinian-American scholar Edward Sa’id asserted that the Western understanding of Arabs, Muslims and the Middle East is a product of colonialism, and that Westerners view the East as inherently inferior and in need of redemption. The US case for war in Iraq rested on orientalist assumptions - that the Middle East was an undifferentiated region of Arabs and Muslims who, lacking any history or valid grievances, are possessed by an irrationally violent nature as well as hatred of the West, Israel, freedom and democracy. The region could be transformed through a combination of US military force and Western enlightenment. Playing on this racist view of Arabs and Muslims which is deeply rooted in the US psyche, the US government managed to convince most Americans, via a complicit media, of fantastic tales about links between Saddam Hussein’s Ba’athist regime and Al Qaeda, stocks of horrific arms, a maniacal desire to use them against the US, and of the beneficial impact of “shock and awe.” This belief that irrational Arab and Muslim violence requires enlightened Western intervention and domination is also used to justify Israeli oppression of the Palestinians, underpins uncritical US support for Israel, and is central to US media coverage of Palestine and Israel.
(...) And in Israel, the other major outpost in “the war on terror,” racist ideology and politically tainted intelligence are also pushed by the government and credulously reported by US media outlets like The New York Times. For example, an April 11, 2007 Times news article by Isabel Kershner headlined unverifiable claims by Israel’s Shin Bet (the equivalent of our FBI) that it had thwarted a massive Hamas suicide bombing planned for Passover.[2] The article largely ignored Palestinian denials reported the same day in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz Daily.[3] The Shin Bet claim seemed to merit skepticism in light of the Palestinian denials, and Hamas’ decision two years ago to halt large-scale attacks.
(...) Indeed, Hamas’ implication in a large-scale bombing plot would have come at a convenient moment for Israel. Following 16 months during which 27 Israelis were killed by Palestinians, the lowest total in more than six years, Israel is struggling to prevent the crumbling of the international boycott of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority, and to fend off repeated peace overtures from the Palestinian Authority, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the Arab League. The Israeli government has been feeding the media stories saying that the calm is a ruse, that Hamas is using it to arm and plan attacks, and that Israel will therefore be forced to mount a large-scale invasion of Gaza soon. The Times has published at least four other articles echoing these Israeli government assertions since March 2007.[4]
(...) I received an email on April 27, 2007 from The New York Times’ Public Editor Byron Calame acknowledging that: “In the editing of the article late in the evening, the denials Haaretz had obtained from unnamed Palestinian and Hamas officials were deleted. While the vagueness of the sourcing made it less essential that those denials be kept in the story, I think the article would have been better with the denials included.”
(...) Of the 1085 Times news articles since December 1, 2004, 37% mentioned Palestinian “attack(s)”, 36% mentioned “terrorism”, 28% mentioned “terrorist(s)”, 21% mentioned Palestinian “violence”,[6] 18% mentioned “suicide bombing(s)”, 16% mentioned Palestinian “weapon(s)”, and 14% mentioned Palestinian “radicals”. In contrast to this strong Israeli narrative, only two words reflecting a Palestinian narrative appeared in a comparable percentage of Times’ news articles. Israeli “settlement(s)” were noted in 32% of articles,[7] and Israeli “occupation” was mentioned in 16% of articles. This imbalance is even more striking because the emphasis on Palestinian terrorism and violence corresponded with a two year and five month period during which Israelis killed 965 Palestinians, more than half civilians, while Palestinians killed 85 Israelis.[8] Nonetheless, Israeli “attacks(s)” are mentioned in 13% of Times articles, and Israeli “violence” in only 4%.
(...) Only very careful readers of Times news reporting would be able to locate, amidst the barrage on Palestinian terrorism, basic elements of the Palestinian experience - Israeli human rights abuses, Israeli attacks and violations of international law, Palestinian poverty, the Palestinian understanding that they are victims of Israeli discrimination and racism, and Israel’s denial of the right of return to Palestinian refugees. In a startling display of bias, since December, 2004, 70 to 130 times as many Times news article mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” or Palestinian “attack(s)” as mentioned Israeli “discrimination”, “racism” or “apartheid”.[9] Thirty-five times as many articles mentioned Palestinian “terrorism” as mentioned Palestinian “poverty”,[10] though 70% of Palestinians are now living below the poverty line.[11]
(...) The same day, April 22, The Times ran a telling parallel news story by Jennifer Medina, “Settlers' Defiance Reflects Postwar Israeli Changes”, about an Israeli settler takeover of a Palestinian home in the middle of a Palestinian neighborhood in Hebron’s old city. Rather than describing Hebron’s settlers, acknowledged by Israelis as extreme, uzi-toting settlers who frequently attack Palestinians, as “radicals” or “extremists”, the Times politely called them “the most uncompromising of the settlers”. And despite the settler takeover of a home in a Palestinian neighborhood, the Times subtly placed the burden of violence on Palestinians, noting, “there are fears of violence -- there have been some reports of young Palestinians throwing rocks at the settlers. And a white Star of David is spray-painted on the front door of a Palestinian family.” Of 1085 Times articles, 133 mentioned Palestinian “radical(s)”, while only four articles mentioned Israeli “radical(s).” Colonizing settlers are neither radical nor violent, but colonized Palestinians are.
(...) Growing Palestinian radicalization is a dangerous trend, but by minimizing Palestinians’ radicalizing experience of oppression and denial of rights, the Times reader is left to rely on the orientalist assumption that radicalism is a disease that springs naturally from Arab and Muslim minds and spreads.
(...) More broadly, the concepts of Israeli discrimination and racism against Palestinians, which are part of the daily language of many Palestinians including Bishara, were raised in only 0.4% and 0.5% of all Times news articles on Israel and Palestine since December 2004. The concept of Israeli apartheid, also a daily staple of Palestinian discourse, but summarily dismissed by the Times’ Ethan Bronner as “overstatement” and a “false echo of the racist policies of the old South Africa”, was mentioned in only 0.3% of all Times news articles from Israel and Palestine. The Times has essentially refused Palestinians the opportunity to present their view that they are victims of discrimination and racism.
(...) Palestinians’ lived experiences - that they are under attack, being killed, impoverished, having their land taken, denied their rights, and the victims of a discriminatory system - are drowned out by the drumbeat of Palestinian terrorism, even when few Israelis are being killed. As with Iraq, this racist narrative of inherent Arab violence is being exploited to justify domination of one people by another. Lacking this analysis, Bill Moyers’ “Buying the War” represents only a first step towards exposing US media bias in covering the Middle East.

interview with kevin cooper from death row:
Kevin Cooper's case exemplifies everything that makes my stomach turn about capital punishment: it's racially biased. It punishes the innocent. And every last person is on death row innocent or not because they couldn't afford the representation that would have saved their lives. As the saying goes, "Those without the capital get the punishment." When we actually read and hear the voices of those on the row, it makes it that much harder for executioners like Schwarzenegger to sell the idea that they are somehow less than human and should be put down like dogs.
(...) DZ: Why has sports, in your mind, become such a central part of the Black experience in the United States?
KC: Throughout the history of America, white people have always loved to be entertained by Black people, especially Black men. The masters of certain slaves would put their slaves up against other slaves from another plantation and they would fight, sometimes to the death. Just as dogs or roosters did. This evolved into sports such as boxing and wrestling. As new sports were invented, and more white people wanted to be entertained, more Blacks were either forced to participate against their will, or they joined in because they found some type of respect if they were good at it. The master's prize fighter got good food, access to women, and was respected and treated pretty goodThat is until he lost.
(...) DZ: In New Orleans, when Katrina hit, the only place available for emergency shelter was the stadium, the Superdome. What does that tell us about our world today?
KC: After Hurricane Katrina hit and the poor people of New Orleans found themselves in the Superdome, it showed the world that, in this country, if you are poor then you are shit out of luck. Nobody will help you when and how you need help, and if you can't make it on your own you are in trouble.
(...) KC: Sports and life are both full of contradictions because both have rules and sometimes the rules are broken and ignored. Mistakes are made but not admitted to. Certain people make calls in both, and for the most part it is the ordinary people who suffer because of the calls made by the leaders or owners. It's the people at the bottom who pay for the mistakes made by the people at the top. It's a dog eat dog world, the winner takes all, and too many people are set up to lose from the get-go.

dividing walls:
The latest wall to divide city neighborhoods went up in Baghdad in April, built by American soldiers using 12-foot (3.7-metre) high grey concrete slabs weighing more than six metric tons each. The 3-mile-long construction separates a Sunni Muslim district from a Shi’ite area. It provoked protests from both communities and Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr termed it “racist.”
(...) Many of the ruses used when the Iron Curtain was still up — hollowed out hiding spaces in cars, tunnels, hook ladders — are still used now. Then, successful crossers were hailed as heroes of freedom. Now they are seen as a threat or a burden.
(...) That applies to one of the least known but longest border barriers of modern times, built by Morocco in the 1980s to curb attacks by the Western Sahara independent movement, Polisario, on territory it claims for itself. It lies behind a set of walls some 1,700 miles long and 10 feet high made of earth, rock and sand built in the 1980s. The wall is defended by thousands of Moroccan troops and fortified by bunkers and fences, barbed wire and landmines — between 200,000 and several million of them, depending on who does the estimating.
(...) Saudi Arabia has quietly invited bids for a 550-mile high-tech fence — complete with sensors, night vision cameras, face-recognition software, barbed wire — to seal off its border with Iraq.
(...) Almost invariably, governments that decide on physical separation from a neighbor predict that it would reduce tension but, at times, that remains wishful thinking. In April, for example, a firefight broke out between Afghan and Pakistani troops after the Afghans tried to tear down parts of a fence running through a tribal area. Pakistan started building a fence along part of the 1,500-mile (2,500-kilometer) border under U.S. pressure to close the routes of Taliban fighters heading to Afghanistan to join the war against U.S. and multinational forces.
(...) But Spain has built double fences 10 to 20 feet high and topped with razor wire around its wealthy enclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco to keep immigrants out.
(...) The fences have had an effect similar to the walls on the border between the United States and Mexico: would-be immigrants from poor countries looked for other ways to reach a rich country. Stepped-up Spanish coastal patrols and better radar systems prompted African migrants to make riskier voyages to the Spanish-owned Canary Islands. Hundreds have drowned.
(...) If history is a guide, no border fortification can seal off a country entirely. Even the mother of all walls, the Great Wall of China, at around 4,000 miles the longest border wall ever built, failed to keep out the northern barbarians against whom it was meant to protect.