Todd's Mischief Blog

USA Today confirms something I've been saying on Twitter and this blog for awhile now: "whiteness" (and by extension, it's counterpart "blackness") has nothing to do with skin color.  In the past, I have hedged that observation by saying "almost nothing to do" but that seems unnecessary going forward.  https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/29/fact-check-warnock-sermon-whiteness-condemns-racism/4008303001/  https://web.archive.org/web/20201229212656if_/https://eu.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2020/12/29/fact-check-warnock-sermon-whiteness-condemns-racism/4008303001/ https://archive.is/OIzqx

It seems obvious to me that comparing an entire race of people to animals is racist. What is less obvious is how comparing an individual or a coterie to animals can be called racist without smuggling in the decidedly racist notion that race is a person’s defining characteristic. Might I suggest that if a 2000-word essay, complete with citations and footnotes, is necessary to explain how uniquely  racist it is to compare a black person to a monkey, then maybe it's not as obviously racity-racist as you thought while you were furiously researching. Why, yes, I am aware that racists have called black people apes and monkeys. Racists tend to say mean things. Yet, somehow, calling people "stupid mother f***ers" has escaped the "racist" designation. By all means, please remind me how scientific racism relied on pseudoscience classifying blacks as simians to justify Social Darwinism. It's important to not forget how racist the Progressive Movement has historically b...

The lost lesson of Jada Williams' essay on Frederick Douglass While most of her peers were spending Christmas break diligently avoiding anything that resembled schoolwork, 13-year-old Jada Williams spent her time reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass and preparing an essay on the book. What Williams read moved her and opened her eyes to some of the problems extant in her Rochester, NY public school. In her essay, which she shared with her class, Williams drew parallels between the appalling illiteracy rate in city schools and the illiterate state slave owners kept blacks in. And she took aim at her teachers. That was apparently a mistake. According to Jada and her mother, the essay launched a campaign of harassment directed at the girl, ultimately forcing her to transfer to another school. I will admit, at first I was skeptical. I thought perhaps Jada’s essay was merely a diatribe of racial grievances with no basis in reality or the book and that the harassment w...

Distancing conservatism from “birthers” may not be as easy as it seems Trump is strutting like a peacock over the release of Obama’s long-form birth certificate. Not surprisingly, even this does not quell the birthers, as indicated by Trump’s promises to now investigate the document . So leave the kooks to themselves. For the rest of us, the issue is put to bed and we can all move on, right? Maybe not. Having the birth certificate released ought to make it easier for Republicans and Tea Partiers alike to distance themselves from the birther movement. As the 2012 presidential campaign season opens, it would be nice to focus on important issues like the economy, foreign affairs, and entitlements. But don’t be surprised if you hear charges of racism lobbed at the president’s political adversaries once more. Already, left-wing pundits say that it was racism in the Tea Party that gave rise to the birther movement. Even if they are willing to admit that birthers were a Clinton Machine creati...