Why do racists trying to justify their garbage post these irrelevant photographs? What argument do they think they are making?
James Lowen
(via Jetty↱), 2006:
My first teaching assignment was at Tougaloo College, a historically black institution in Tougaloo, Mississippi. In my first year, I taught a course developed by the history department that was titled "The Freshman Social Science Seminar." In it we introduced students to sociology, anthropology, political science, economics, and psychology in the context of African American history. This made sense because 99% of our students were African American.
The second semester of the course began with events immediately following the Civil War. I had a new group of students in the second semester, and I didn't want to do all the talking on the first day of class, so I asked them, "We're starting with Reconstruction. What is that period?"
What followed was an "Aha!" experience for me. Or it might be better called an "Oh no!" experience. Sixteen out of 17 students said, "Reconstruction was that period right after the Civil War when blacks took over the government of the Southern states. But they were too soon out of slavery, so they screwed up, and white folks had to take control again."
Now, there are at least three complete misstatements—lies I would call them—in that sentence, and I was just floored by it. Blacks never took over the government of the Southern states; the Reconstruction governments did not, on the whole, screw up; and whites didn't resume control at the end of Reconstruction. However, a certain group of "whites" did take control, using terrorist tactics. It was, in fact, the original Ku Klux Klan.
So I thought, "What must your teachers have done to you to make you believe that the one time your group was center stage in American history, they screwed up, and whites had to take control back again?"
If it were true, that would be fine. But it is not true. What these students had learned we might call BS—that would be Bad Sociology—in the black public schools. What they had learned was being taught by black teachers in all-black schools. But it was white supremacist history because their teachers were just blindly teaching what was in the textbooks. Seeing the outcome made me aware that history can be a weapon and that it can be used against you, just as it had been against my black students.
This part stands out, over and over again, as my socmed lights up with recycled knockoff racist wetending. As with a lot of revivalist imitation-oldschool evangelism in these United States, it just doesn't read as effectively in a room where playing along, knowing better even than to nod and wink, is no longer the empowered presupposition. If you go back in Sciforums history, you can find some of the old, two-bit Christian evangelization failing because the speed and magnitude, the repetition in realtime, was bewildering compared to the comfort of a bully pulpit blindly presupposed and enjoyed only a handful of years before; for some of those evangelists, it was only the day before. The transformation was probably shocking, an extraordinarily rapid social change contributing to a growing crisis consciousness°.
Apparently, neither of our leading advocates demanding judgment of black discourse know how to find, or perceive, or however that works, seem to understand how their own tropes work; they're recycling spooned presuppository stimulant, and apparently mainlining it.
I've actually been thinking about
another post of yours↗, because I wouldn't dispute it even though I was thinking of something else; where I get hung up, in that case, is reconciling the two aspects, which ought to be easy enough, but still. To the other, given my focus on the idea of what an individual decides, as such, in that question, it really is easy to get distracted by the glint of significance about a white woman in Branson trying to justify her KKK advocacy with Confederate flag in hand.
Part of it is the bit about blacking out, essentially a competency defense, which really does haunt the whiff of a notion I'm chasing in that other discussion. Sorry, I just don't know quite what to do with this one, and it halfway fits, here:
From an undisclosed location, Kathy Jenkins called the KOLR10 newsroom. Her mission: To make a public apology for the "ugly" things she said in a now-viral video.
The video, which surfaced on Monday, isn't long. It only runs about 35 seconds. In it, Jenkins sits and later stands on the bed of a pickup truck while holding and dancing with a Confederate flag.
"I will teach my grandkids to hate you all," she says to someone off camera. She later raises her fist and declares "KKK belief" ....
.... When she called KOLR10 and Ozarks First, she wouldn't even say where she was calling from; only specifying that she has left Branson, her home of six years.
All of this, a response to what she describes as a misunderstood portion of her day caught on video.
(Lingo↱)
It's a painful video to watch. The excerpt in circulation:
Jenkins: It was not—it had nothing to do with the people there for the Black Lives Matter, because I was also chanting, "Black Lives Matter", which they do. And I was yelling—I was saying that to the girls that were screaming in my face. Because I didn't—you know, and it just, it came out wrong, is what it did; it came out so wrong.
Q: So, if you say that you were representing Black Lives Matter, why did you have the Confederate flag.
Jenkins: It was given to me. It was given to me on the property, and I just, I just got so angry it just, it just happened. And obviously I don't understand the whole Confederate flag thing, and that's something that I've been learning for the last couple of days, the meaning of the Confederate flag. I always thought that it was about, you know, uniting people together, not dividing people. I didn't understand that the Confederate flag meant hate; I just thought people didn't understand the history of the Confederate flag, like I don't understand the whole history of the Confederate flag, but I'm learning. And I would never, ever, ever hold up another Confederate flag in my life.
The article notes more of Jenkins' discussion with a local news station, claiming: "I was chanting black Lives matter … and that's not even on video," she told KOLR 10. "It's like I blacked out. I don't even remember."
To the one, apparently she just wanted to see what the rally was like. "I've never been to one," she said. And, apparently, she watched from across the street, and that is when someone gave her a flag. The Ozarks First report notes, "She told KOLR10 she assumed it was a symbol of unity. She says she then sat in the bed of a truck belonging to someone she didn't know."
Later, when she was approached by people from the other side of the street, she says she lost her temper.
"I hadn't said anything until they came into my face…It's like I blacked out. I don't even remember saying half the stuff that I said."
As for the part about holding the same beliefs as the Ku Klux Klan, she says she was mocking the people who approached her.
"I wasn't saying I'm KKK or for the KKK. I was mocking them because I don't like being called a racist," she said ....
.... “I mean, if it would help for me to stand with Black Lives Matter, I absolutely would do that.”
A protest organizer, Faith Pittser, did respond to the apology, disputing Jenkins' account, and arguing, "Her apology does not make sense as she's trying to state she didn't realize she was on the opposing side. How do you not realize that if you're on Dixie Outfitter's property holding a confederate flag along with the other counter-protesters that are facing us?"
In the other thread I had difficulty moving past the contrast between the larger consideration of the banality of evil and the point of noncompetency justifying individual decisions; if I haven't answered you directly on that, it's because I still don't have a useful one fully assembled.
More toward the present discussion, there are reasons why people behave in certain ways. Amid attitudes and behaviors that can convince even people of color to accept racist make-believe°°, something about the desperate appeal to righteousness in the Jenkins apologia really stands out, reminding just how thoroughly such myths and beliefs permeate large sections of the American population.
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Notes:
°
See Riesebrodt (1993), p. 17:
°° The Jetty interview with Loewen is titled in reference to a chapter on "Red Eyes" that, as I recall, you are well familiar with.
Jetty, Mike. "History Through Red Eyes: A Conversation With James Loewen". Phi Delta Kappan, v. 88, n. 3. November, 2006. Web.Archive.org. 7 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2BNCfYP
Lingo, Collin. "'I don't represent hate', Branson woman apologizes after viral video". Ozarks First. 24 June 2020. OzarksFirst.com. 7 July 2020. https://bit.ly/2NydMZQ
Riesebrodt, Martin. Pious Passion: The Emergence of Modern Fundamentalism in the United States and Iran. Oakland: University of California Press, 1993.
