Michelle Obama has reduced the right wing to spluttering excuses with one simple fact: slaves built the White House. But it’s true! The White House is located in the South, between Maryland, a slave state which didn’t ban slavery until 1864, and Virginia, which fought on the other side in the Civil War. Of course slaves were heavily used in the construction.

But now we’re seeing standard neo-Confederate apologetics on Fox News. But the slaves were treated kindly by their masters, suggests Bill O’Reilly.

After Michelle Obama’s speech mentioned “a house built by slaves” as part of a beautiful rhetorical arc putting the lie to the idea of some fabled perfect America of some unspecified past, the usual suspects have been performing their gymnastics, trying to reclaim the myth of the perfect Founding Fathers. Bill O’Reilly is just one of them, but yup, he uses the phrase “Slaves that worked there were well-fed and had decent lodgings provided by the government.” He needs to watch Roots again, but the thing that gets me on these usual suspects is, they so often seem to be the same ones bleating “give me liberty or give me death” when confronted with what seem to me to be constraints that are… a little bit less than actual enslavement.

Exactly. People who wax wroth about losing their twitter privileges or having to leave their assault rifle at home are now protesting that slavery wasn’t so bad for the slaves.

O’Reilly needs to be fired. It won’t be so bad…he’s rich, he can count on steady revenue from speaking engagements with the KKK and the League of the South. He’ll continue to be well fed and have decent lodgings. As long as he’s got that, we can do anything we want to him.

This is a thread dedicated to discussion of race issues in the US. Tony and rq are the curators, and they will be posting news and links here. Please feel free to add to the conversation, but this is not the place for argument; increase the information, not the conflict.

Previous thread

Poor Milo. The Breitbart crank, hero to the worst elements of the internet, was very bitter about the fact that Twitter removed the blue verification checkmark from his profile, about as petty a slight as can be imagined. I have no idea how he’ll react to the latest news: Twitter has finally, permanently banned Milo Yiannopoulos from the service.

Yiannopoulos, who currently serves as Breitbart.com’s tech editor, has been hailed as a standout voice of the new “alt-right” movement. As such, he has made a living as a provocateur, continually inflaming tensions between progressive branches of the internet focused on identity politics and the fervently anti-PC segment that constantly trolls it. For years, Yiannopoulous has used Twitter not only to voice his controversial opinions but to direct his legion of followers (388,042 at the time of this writing) toward his opponents. As a result, he’s been temporarily banned from Twitter a number of times for violating terms of service and stripped of his verification.

It’s about time that he was permanently kicked off for his incessant abuse. What did it at last? Milo was one of the people who led the racist, sexist online assault against Leslie Jones, whose sole crime was being one of the stars of the new Ghostbusters movie. The social injustice warriors were already irate that somehow, a remake of an old movie with women cast in major roles was an unforgivable slight against their masculinity, so they tried to pump themselves up by sending a tsunami of vile, filthy, bigoted imagery against a black woman.

It’s nice that something finally drove Twitter to do something about it — their responses to online harassment have been infuriatingly forgiving to some incredibly nasty stuff — but it’s a shame that it takes something as savage as the attacks on Jones to get them to finally do what needed to be done about one person.

Steve King doesn’t like it when you point out the the Republican convention seems to consist of a lot of angry white people.

“This whole ‘white people’ business, though, does get a little tired, Charlie [Pierce]. I mean, I’d ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you’re talking about? Where did any other sub-group of people contribute to civilization?”

If you, like me, found it hard to believe anyone would say something so stupid and wrong, it’s on video.

Hey, at least King is being open and honest in confirming that the GOP is the party of cranky white bigots.

The internet, social media, the passage of time…none of that matters. When you read Martin Luther King’s hate mail, it all sounds exactly the same. White people complaining about black people disrupting their comfortable lives by getting demanding, and using their discomfort to justify slapping them down.

What is this Black Power business? If it is a threat to Whites– why should Whites not retaliate? Why should Whites hire Blacks?

And who is at fault? The people who are most oppressed.

You are responsible for all of these riots and havoc in this country today.

I want that person to get together with this person:

You don’t point out any FAULTS at all of your own people, just the whites.

I’m sure they’d then agree that it’s unfair to single out one group. Or perhaps a third person would chime in with an accusation of black criminality.

The hatred between the race is now at an all time peak and will get worse as the niggers continue to beat, rape and murder white women and girls.

No round of complaints is complete without someone chiming in with a ‘Dear Muslima’ — it’s much worse elsewhere, so shut up and accept a lesser inequality here.

It would be well if every American Negro compared his position and opportunity with that of his race in other countries. He would find that in none does the Negro have the advantages the United States gives him. As justified as may be many of the demands Negroes make, they are not the only matter of importance in the world.

And of course, the people telling a black civil rights leader to sit down and shut up are the true egalitarians.

It certainly must take unmititgated gall to ask the public, particularly “WHITEY” for funds to keep you and your ilk rolling along in the manner to which you have become to visibly accustomed.

Your false image is beginning to catch up with your as well as others.

I believe and contribute to any cause for advancing human dignity.

But this letter is my very favorite.

Do return that ‘Nobel-peace-prize’ that we bestowed upon you, (as a great honor) so we can give it to some one who really deserves it.

“We”? Don’t you just love the casual assumption that all the white people get together and decide who gets to have a Nobel prize?

But yeah, this person would sort of get their wish. The prize wasn’t retracted, but the Nobel committee did award one to a deserving white man: Henry Kissinger.

It’s a collection of old letters, ink on paper, that does provide some perspective on the electronic deluge of anonymous hatred we get now. It’s nothing new. Different medium, same old bigots.

Forget that parade of ignorant bozos asking stupid questions of progressives…there are genuine social problems that need to be dealt with, rather than more coddling of us lucky white men. Start with this excellent discussion of identity politics and the left.

That sexism and racism exist cannot seriously be in doubt for any progressive person in the year 2016. Everyone has an identity; every identity is political, whether because it is marginalized or because it benefits from the marginalization of others. It is not “enlightening” or fresh or radical to ignore identity-based oppressions, or minimize them, or demand marginalized people stop talking about them. Oppression is not a “debate” or a “discussion.” It’s a fact. You can “debate” gravity all day, but that won’t change what happens when you drop a bowling ball on your foot. You can “debate” sexism all day, too. The outcome of sexist behaviors remains the same.

Viewpoints which attack “identity politics” directly attack marginalized people. Viewpoints which do not take racism, sexism, homophobia, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, or transphobia into account are not “universal” or “pure” — they are biased in favor of white, male, straight, Christian or cisgender people.

Too often complaints about politics are fundamentally not about politics, but that questioning the status quo upsets their political views. Similarly, right now people are upset about Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s comments about our orange fascist, Donald Trump, and she’s being accused of “politicizing” the Supreme Court, which is simply absurd. The Republicans are extremely annoyed.

But the Supreme Court is extremely political! Every election year, everyone fusses over the importance of which political party captures the presidency, because it will affect appointments to the court. We all know this. Yet somehow we’re supposed to just close our eyes and pretend that these people have no political views? Roberts and Thomas and Alito and goddamned Scalia were pure political ciphers, completely neutral on everything?

We only do that when the political actor reflects the dominant, majority view, which we’re told is simply the default, and anyone who disagrees with it must be some kind of radical weirdo who is “politicizing” the process.

If you’re really in the reality-based community, you have to acknowledge that the Republican nominee for president is an incompetent bigot. Keep it up, RBG.

They did! And it’s every bit as stupid, clueless, and inane as you might imagine. It’s titled QUESTIONS WHITE MEN HAVE FOR SJWs!, and it features Sargon of Akkad, Undoomed, Armoured Skeptic, Atheism is Unstoppable, Kraut and Tea, Chris Ray Run, Anthony Fantano, Mr Repzion, Cult of Dusty, and of course, The Amazing Atheist, (nice list of youtubers to ignore forevermore) and they have 27 questions shouted by a group of indignant white men in silly costumes or using pretentious animated avatars, all demonstrating that special combination of oblivious racism and sexism that makes other white male atheists cringe in embarrassment. I’m not going to link to it, but I will post the QUESTIONS! they ask, because they’re so mundane and goofy. You can see the whole thing over at Martin Hughes’ place, and most importantly, you can see his lengthy replies. I’ll just give flippant replies here.

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