White racism won’t just die off: No utopia awaits when retrograde attitudes like Donald Sterling and

[DonViejo]

White racism won’t just die off: No utopia awaits when retrograde attitudes like Donald Sterling and Cliven Bundy’s are gone

Sterling and Bundy belong to a different generation, but Paul Ryan and the Supreme Court are enshrining white power

BRITTNEY COOPER

Plantation metaphors are generally considered an inelegant way to speak about America’s ongoing problems with racial discrimination. Such metaphors seemingly gloss over the long civil rights movement, which provided the center upon which 20th-century politics pivoted. Talk of plantations make it seem as though nothing has changed.

What, then, should we do when it is revealed that the Nevada rancher encroaching on public lands, who has captured the hearts of the GOP, also not so surprisingly believes that cotton picking and the institution of slavery of which it was a central part served black people well — especially black women — by giving us “something to do”? What should we do when the owner of the L.A. Clippers insists his mixed-race black and Mexican girlfriend not bring black people to his games, even though the majority of players on the team are black?

(After we scratch our heads at the idiocy that would cause the local chapter of the NAACP to give such a man a lifetime achievement award, after clear knowledge of multiple racist incidents in his past, then perhaps we put the choice words of Lil Wayne and Snoop Dogg on repeat.)

What should we do when the Supreme Court chooses to enable and perpetuate our national campaign of dishonesty about the continued and pervasive challenge of racial discrimination by upholding Michigan’s ban on affirmative action?

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http://www.salon.com/2014/04/29/white_racism_wont_just_die_off_no_utopia_awaits_when_retrograde_attitudes_like_donald_sterling_and_cliven_bundys_are_gone/

[uponit7771]

1. The litmus for racism in the US is the N-Word etc and not the actions of institutions and persons...

... that implement racist policies that aren't relayed in the most overt terms.

I'd like to see this same reaction from GOP pols and media at

- inequality of resources in Americas school systems
- one of the most racially antagonistic judicial systems in the world
- jobs that can't be gotten by people of color because of their names on a resume