The Internet Racist Code Words and Tropes Glossary

From TheBlaze.com

Understanding racism today requires that one understand the subtleties of the language of those who perpetuate it.

Please contribute to the glossary in the comments section. I will add confirmed, relevant and accurate tropes to the glossary. Please read the entire article first.

Please note the difference between individual uses of prejudiced language and institutional racism. I encourage readers who have not yet already, to investigate this subject, which I’ll inevitably be posting on. The following post addresses use of racially prejudiced language and ideas in the context of institutional racism.

INTRODUCTION
As a result of the abolition of slavery, then later desegregation and the Civil Rights Movement, and finally the combination of contemporary cultural pressures and demographic shifts, the language of racial prejudice and bigoted assumptions has changed dramatically, especially over the last 50 or so years. Words that start with N are no longer the haute couture of racists and privilege-denying whites. Although the old words are cropping up in specific places which guarantee anonymity and/or acceptance, the use of subtlety, context, subjective subtext and nuance have taken the place of open slurs and language.

The 99%: Should We Be Aligned with Killers and Bigots?

With the exception of a tendency toward reformism, I support the general idea of Occupy movements; that is, I don’t oppose it, but many potential participants would like to see a better, more cogent analysis of class from the movement. The analysis of the 99% of society vs 1% of the top owners and controllers of wealth and resources is a start, but it begins with a flaw: much, much more than the top 1% of the wealthiest people in the U.S. are a part of “the problem.” (Corporatism cannot be fixed by reforms, as capitalism itself is the problem, and is the perpetual crisis, but that is a subject for another post.) To begin with, if I remember correctly about 90% of the wealth in the U.S. belongs to about the top 5% of the population.

In addition to this issue, when you say “We Are the 99%” you are including the following groups and individuals. But, do we really want to be aligned with:

• Cops who have killed people? Done terrible things to people on a daily basis, because it’s part of State policing? Police departments are composed of people who have systematically assaulted, intimidated, harassed, stolen from, framed, sexually assaulted and committed any other number of degrading, traumatic and immoral things to us. They’ve squashed our freedom of speech, preyed upon people of color and poor people, and protected each other against accountability for their actions. According to the Occupy analysis, they are the 99% and therefore “one of us.”
• White supremacists? White nationalists, racist civil-libertarians, members of the Ku Klux Klan, racists who are not part of a group, Minutemen border patrollers and other nativists, citizen groups that seek to oppress groups because of racist viewpoints, anti-immigrant groups, well-connected bloggers who call for violence against Muslims and other people they oppose. There are Holocaust deniers and historical revisionists like Mark Weber and followers of David Irving. They are all part of this 99% category.
• Religious groups and their members which advance an agenda of oppression? Groups like the Family Research Council, Abiding Truth Ministries. There’s “gay conversion therapists,” the Heritage Foundation, the 700 Club, and plenty more anti-gay, anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant and otherwise xenophobic religious groups, members and followers falling into the 99%.
• Individuals who promote hate? I doubt Glenn Beck falls into the top 1% of all wealth-owners in the U.S. There’s Tony Perkins, Bryan Fischer, Robert Spencer, Pam Geller, Mat Staver, Harry Jackson, Jerry Boykin. Are these our allies?

Here I have provided just a handful of examples of groups and individuals who Occupiers may want to reconsider being aligned with. There’s plenty more, and I’d like to hear your examples, as well as rebuttals and ideas about the 99% class analysis. Please leave your comment below.

NJ Police Kill Unarmed Man–When Citizens Respond, Cops Squash the 1st Amendment

Whereas the police violence at Occupy Wall Street has found its way into the mainstream press, this video depicts the struggle going on every single day against unchecked State repression in communities of color.

The victim of the police shooting is Barry Deloatch. Here is an announcement from Hub City Anti-Racist Action on his murder by police. I’ll write more on the subject of police shootings in the future, from Aaron Campbell to Oscar Grant, and all across the U.S.

This should be reposted where possible.

White Privilege Rears its Ugly Head: 46% of Whites in U.S. Think They are Victims of Racial Discrimination

In 1960, Non-Hispanic whites made up 85% of the U.S. population. The U.S. Census Bureau predicts that by 2050, Non-Hispanic whites will only comprise 46.3% of the population. As white privilege declines, we see more and more instances of whites mistaking growing racial equality (slowly-growing, if at all) and (all-too-slowly) shrinking white privilege for growing “discrimination” against us whites. This new study and report by the Brookings Institution and the Public Religion Research Institute provides an appalling insight into the pathology of a privileged majority whose power to oppress, be it loudly or subtly, with or without intent, is on the decline:

Anti-Islam Group Defends Children by Sexually Exploiting Them

Child's face is not redacted in original.

An anti-Islam group has posted a flier featuring the face of a small girl next to a photoshopped image of an Arab man, unpretentiously implying that the child depicted is or could be the victim of sexual molestation by Muslim men. The group Defendstudents.org purports to defend unsuspecting children, circumventing actual parents to warn kids themselves against the Islamic monster under their beds. They take fliers like this one and pass them out at schools, as evidenced by this passage from the blurb under the flier:

The “Defend our Students Campaign” will distribute a very provocative flyer that exposes the truth about Muhammed sexually abusing his six-year-old wife. This will occur at Milpitas High School in Milpitas at 2:30 p.m. The purpose of the campaign is to protect our young people from being recruited and radicalized by Islam by forcing our schools to tell the truth.

The group does not list contact information, other than a dropbox for reports of supposed Islamic abuses and intimidation. But we can certainly ascertain a few things from the flier and the organization itself: one, the child in the photo is too young to be able to consent to being associated with sexual abuse, especially on record and on school campuses across America; and likely no consent was given anyways. And two, this organization that claims to be about child advocacy has no idea how to approach the issue of child abuse, how to protect a child’s identity and dignity, or really anything about child advocacy at all. I can tell you now that there is no legitimate child advocacy organization in the U.S. that would plaster a kid’s face all over America, in schools and on the internet with the words, “Married to Children” boldly proclaiming the depicted child to be a sex slave. Must I say that the blatant aim of Defendstudents.org is not to help children but to hurt Arab Muslims? Yup.
Update: Commenter wheatdogg over at Ed Brayton’s blog Dispatches from the Culture Wars points out that the type of turban the man in the poorly Photoshopped image is wearing is not typical of Mulims but of Sikhs. It would not be surprising to see the depraved anti-Islam community confusing people of Middle Eastern decent out of blatant xenophobia–i.e., “a Sikh is a Muslim is a brown person whose culture hails from foreign lands.” aka “They all look the same to me.” If anybody out there knows more, please let me know in the comments section. Thanks.