Must-read New Yorker essay: 'Now is the time to burn false equivalencies forever'

[Me.]

“Now is the time to resist the slightest extension in the boundaries of what is right and just. Now is the time to speak up and to wear as a badge of honor the opprobrium of bigots. Now is the time to confront the weak core at the heart of America’s addiction to optimism; it allows too little room for resilience, and too much for fragility. Hazy visions of “healing” and “not becoming the hate we hate” sound dangerously like appeasement. The responsibility to forge unity belongs not to the denigrated but to the denigrators. The premise for empathy has to be equal humanity; it is an injustice to demand that the maligned identify with those who question their humanity.”…cont…

“Yet, a day after the election, I heard a journalist on the radio speak of the vitriol between Obama and Trump. No, the vitriol was Trump’s. Now is the time to burn false equivalencies forever. Pretending that both sides of an issue are equal when they are not is not “balanced” journalism; it is a fairy tale—and, unlike most fairy tales, a disingenuous one.”…cont…

http://www.dailykos.com/

[Stellar]

1. hear, hear! nt.

[Wounded Bear]

2. K & R ...... nt

[TygrBright]

3. Link does not go to article quoted. n/t

[Me.]

4. It Goes To Kos Front Page

I should've said scroll down. Below is a link to the original article in the New Yorker

http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/now-is-the-time-to-talk-about-what-we-are-actually-talking-about

[TygrBright]

6. Thanks, that's what I was looking for anyway. n/t

[BeyondGeography]

5. If the journalist was on NPR, those people are afraid of their own shadows

Thanks to Republican intimidation and their own fecklessness.

Between fake news, Faux News, morally bankrupt network CEOs like Zucker and Moonves, Nice Polite Republicans and the rest of the sellouts starting at the crack of dawn with Morning Joe, we really are up against it. And we still won the popular vote and more people still voted for Democratic candidates. Shows you just how much help the tyranny of the minority actually needs.

[Garrett78]

8. I was listening to an NPR interview of a Somali immigrant in Ohio...

...following the incident at Ohio State. The interviewee was being asked to explain why it is that 2 Somalis (from different parts of the US) had committed terrible crimes in recent months. The interviewee was quite polite. I would have said, "When's the last time you interviewed a white person in order to have that person speak for all white people in response to multiple white people committing the same sort of crime? Oh, you never have? Not once? Well, fuck off then."

[BeyondGeography]

11. Well said

The coddling of white people in this country (Ammon Bundy verdict, anyone?) and the corresponding social suffocation of nonwhites is so casual as to be ingrained. Thanks for the reminder.

[Garrett78]

12. Sure thing.

It's evident that many well-meaning people of DU need an education in oppression theory, systemic racism vs. individual attitudes, white privilege, etc.

But I admit that's a bit disheartening, because it's tough enough having to deal with the likes of those who vote for the likes of Trump.

[mcar]

7. Brilliant!

[Garrett78]

9. I urge everyone to read the article in its entirety.

Including this part:

Now is the time to remember that there are working-class Americans who are not white and who have suffered the same deprivations and are equally worthy of news profiles. Now is the time to remember that “women” does not equal white women. “Women” must mean all women.

Now is the time to elevate the art of questioning. Is the only valid resentment in America that of white males? If we are to be sympathetic to the idea that economic anxieties lead to questionable decisions, does this apply to all groups? Who exactly are the élite?

Now is the time to frame the questions differently. If everything remained the same, and Hillary Clinton were a man, would she still engender an overheated, outsized hostility? Would a woman who behaved exactly like Trump be elected? Now is the time to stop suggesting that sexism was absent in the election because white women did not overwhelmingly vote for Clinton. Misogyny is not the sole preserve of men.

The case for women is not that they are inherently better or more moral. It is that they are half of humanity and should have the same opportunities—and be judged according to the same standards—as the other half. Clinton was expected to be perfect, according to contradictory standards, in an election that became a referendum on her likability.

[Me.]

10. Thanks For Posting

[Hekate]

13. KnR

[BSdetect]

14. K&R