Categories
asides

Occupied America

From Where Did Policing Go Wrong:

Police are trained to behave like occupiers, which is why they increasingly dress like they’ve been sent to clear houses in Mosul and treat random motorists like potential car-bombers – think of poor Philando Castile, shot seven times by a police officer who leaped backfiring in panic like he was being attacked by Freddy Krueger, instead of a calm, compliant, educated young man. Officers with histories of abuse complaints like Daniel Pantaleo and Derek Chauvin are kept on the force because senior officers value police who make numbers more than they fear outrage from residents in their districts. The incentives in this system are wrong in every direction.

Categories
life politics

What Makes Me White

All of my ancestors, according to my DNA, are from northwestern Europe. Most of them were Irish, a little over a quarter of them were English or Welsh, a little under a fifth of them were French, and about 3% of them were Swedish or Dutch.

But that’s not what makes me white.

Many African peoples, when northwestern Europeans first returned to the mother continent, referred to them not as “white people” or “fair-skinned people,” but as mzungu, which translates as “wanderer.”

So it’s not my skin’s contrast to theirs that makes me white.

My skin’s pigmentation is a product of my evolutionary chain. Its genetic heritage can (currently) be traced back to roughly 7,700 years ago, when at least seven individuals in southern Sweden had two gene variants that “lead to depigmentation, and therefore, pale skin” and a third variant, “which causes blue eyes and may also contribute to light skin and blond hair.” These gene variants were perhaps naturally selected to maximize vitamin D synthesis in the northern latitudes, where it is harder for the human body to get vitamin D thanks to a decrease of ultra-violet radiation in northern sunlight.

But my ancestors’ evolutionary journey into the northern latitudes does not make me white. If it did, the first northern Europeans to reach central Africa wouldn’t have been called mzungu.

What makes me white is the Atlantic slave trade, the belief by a population that would come to define themselves as white that they were more significant, more deserving, more…human than those they defined as not-white.

Race requires racism to exist. It is the excuse the powerful use to justify their power to themselves. It allows them to normalize for themselves their dominance over an entire population.

The first central Africans to see northern Europeans saw a people who were lost, people who were aimlessly moving across the land.

The northern Europeans, on the other hand, saw the central Africans as slaves to be used, as resources to be plucked up and burnt out. The difference in skin pigmentation did not create that difference in power

My skin doesn’t make me white. My DNA doesn’t make me white.

The need to justify my population’s social and institutional domination over cohabiting populations makes me white.

“You have to dominate,” my white President told the nation’s governors. “If you don’t dominate, you’re wasting your time.”

Fuck. That. Guy.

Black Lives Matter.

Categories
asides

Obama on Police Brutality Protests

It’s mayors and county executives that appoint most police chiefs and negotiate collective bargaining agreements with police unions. It’s district attorneys and state’s attorneys that decide whether or not to investigate and ultimately charge those involved in police misconduct. Those are all elected positions.

President Obama, How to Make this Moment the Turning Point for Real Change
Categories
asides

Art as Science Lesson

But who said art should be an escape, a comfort, a barbiturate? Art’s tougher and mightier than that — and for some of the greatest painters of the past, the stuff of art resided in the gory mess of real life.

NY Times, Taking Lessons From a Bloody Masterpiece
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asides

Humankind has evolved to cooperate

If there was one dogma that defined neoliberalism, it’s that most people are selfish. And it’s from that cynical view of human nature that all the rest followed – the privatisation, the growing inequality, and the erosion of the public sphere.

Now a space has opened up for a different, more realistic view of human nature: that humankind has evolved to cooperate. It’s from that conviction that all the rest can follow – a government based on trust, a tax system rooted in solidarity, and the sustainable investments needed to secure our future. And all this just in time to be prepared for the biggest test of this century, our pandemic in slow motion – climate change.

Rutger Bregman, The Neoliberal Era is Ending. What Comes Next?

Categories
asides

Why Bernie Never Calls Himself a Democrat

The problem, though, is that Democrats in Washington are not just passively failing to mount a strong opposition to Donald Trump – they are actively helping Republicans try to fortify the obstacles to long-term progressive change well after this emergency subsides.

The Guardian, Democrats Are Fueling a Corporate Counter-Revolution Against Progressives
Categories
asides

Images of Health Are Boring

We Live in a Patchwork Pandemic Now:

Prevention is physically rewarding in the long term, but not emotionally rewarding in the short term. People who stay home won’t feel a pleasant dopamine kick from their continued health. Those who flock together will feel hugs and sunshine. The former will be tempted to join the latter. The media could heighten that temptation by offering…“disparity in spectacle.” Fringe exceptions like anti-lockdown protests and packed restaurants…are more dramatic and telegenic than people responsibly staying at home, and so more likely to be covered. The risk is that rare acts of incaution will seem like normal behavior.