Happy Fred Korematsu Day!

Also check out the Korematsu Institute: http://korematsuinstitute.org/

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Show me your papers

From Catholic Archbishop of Mobile, Rev. Thomas Rodi (excerpt, full-text at link, emphasis all mine):

This is our right as Americans and as citizens of Alabama. Sometimes people will say that the U.S. Constitution gives us the freedom to worship. Actually, the Constitution gives us the right to the free exercise of our religion. “Freedom to Worship” means that we can come together on Sunday to worship. “Free Exercise” means that, when we leave church on Sunday, we have the right to exercise our faith in our daily lives. This new law prevents us as believers from exercising our life of faith as commanded by the Lord Jesus.

I did not wish to enter into a legal action against the government of Alabama. It is not my temperament to look for an argument. I prayed fervently about this matter, and my prayer kept bringing me back to the motto I chose ten years ago for my bishop’s coat of arms: “The love of Christ impels us” (2 Cor 5:14) Indeed, the love of Christ impels us to “Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit…” (Matthew 28:19). No law is just which prevents the proclamation of the Gospel, the baptizing of believers, or love shown to neighbor in need. I do not wish to stand before God and, when God asks me if I fed him when he was hungry or gave him to drink when he was thirsty, to reply: yes, Lord, as long as you had the proper documents.

Throughout our history we have been a nation of immigrants. The words of Moses to the Hebrew people should resonate in our own hearts: “You shall not oppress or afflict the alien among you, for you were once aliens residing in the land of Egypt.” (Exodus 22:20) As citizens we have the right to live our Christian faith. As Christians, we have an obligation to do so.

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Race: Are We So Different?

From June 18, 2011, through January 1, 2012, the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC, will be hosting an exhibit called “Race: Are We So Different?”

The exhibition RACE: Are we so different? brings together the everyday experience of living with race, its history as an idea, the role of science in that history, and the findings of contemporary science that are challenging its foundations.

Interactive exhibit components, historical artifacts, iconic objects, compelling photographs, multimedia presentations, and attractive graphic displays offer visitors to RACE an eye-opening look at its important subject matter.

Developed by the American Anthropological Association in collaboration with the Science Museum of Minnesota, RACE is the first nationally traveling exhibition to tell the stories of race from the biological, cultural, and historical points of view. Combining these perspectives offers an unprecedented look at race and racism in the United States.

Other museums have been and will be hosting this exhibit as well. Current and upcoming locations include Boston, Charlotte, Santa Barbara, New Orleans, Houston, and Durham. Please visit the official website for a virtual tour and the tour schedule.

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A Long History of Racial Preferences… For Whites

Larry Adelman writes:

Many middle-class white people, especially those of us who grew up in the suburbs, like to think that we got to where we are today by virtue of our merit– hard work, intelligence, pluck, and maybe a little luck. And while we may be sympathetic to the plight of others, we close down when we hear the words “affirmative action” or “racial preferences.” We worked hard, we made it on our own, the thinking goes, why don’t “they”? After all, it’s been almost 40 years now since the Civil Rights Act was passed.

What we don’t readily acknowledge is that racial preferences have a long, institutional history in this country– a white history.

Read more.

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Because there are no racists

Marilyn Davenport, a Tea Party activist and member of the Orange County, California, GOP central committee, is under fire for sending a racist email about President Obama to conservative colleagues. The email reads, “Now you know why no birth certificate,” followed by the image below depicting the President as a chimpanzee.

The email perpetuates the birther myth, which seems only to be gathering steam despite having been refuted several times. As Garrett Epps writes for The Atlantic, “The drip-drip-drip of “birther” propaganda is part of a general, persistent assault on the legitimacy of immigrants and non-whites in American culture. Lurking behind the rhetoric of ‘I want my country back’ is a simple refusal to recognize the citizenship, or even the humanity, of anyone but white males.” This dehumanization is reflected in the depiction of the President as an ape, an image echoing historical associations of black people with brutes that were used as “evidence” of white racial superiority:

[ht Sociological Images]

It’s hard to know exactly, but it seems to me that there’s been a resurgence of this kind of imagery since the ’08 general election campaign (a couple examples here and here).

The racist trope of black people as monkeys is universally familiar in American culture. There’s virtually no way someone repeating this trope would not be at least somewhat aware of its racist implications or history. On top of all that, this is not the first time Davenport has been implicated in racist behavior:

Michael J. Schroeder, an Orange County resident and former chairman of the California Republican Party, also said he was disgusted.

“This is a three strikes situation for Marilyn Davenport,” Schroeder said. “She was a passionate defender of former Newport Beach city councilman Dick Nichols who stated that he was voting against putting in more grass at Corona del Mar’s beach because, he said, there were already ‘too many Mexicans on the beach.’ She was also on the wrong side of the fence with the Los Alamitos mayor and his White House watermelon patch picture. Now, she has managed to top both of those incidents by comparing African Americans to monkeys. She has disgraced herself and needs to resign. If she doesn’t, the Republican Party must remove her.” (The OC Weekly)

So you might be as astounded as I was to read that Davenport is claiming there’s nothing racist about the email, and engaging in derailing “I am not a racist” bingo in response to news coverage of this incident:

Reached by telephone and asked if she thought the email was appropriate, Davenport said, “Oh, come on! Everybody who knows me knows that I am not a racist. It was a joke. I have friends who are black. Besides, I only sent it to a few people–mostly people I didn’t think would be upset by it.”

Wow. To share an email depicting a black man as a chimp and then take offense at the suggestion that one might be racist is…bold? Clueless? Disingenuous? I don’t know. Like Ta-Nehisi Coates says, it seems these days that despite increasingly vocal and widespread expressions of white racial resentment, there are no racists.

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