Racism still is up-front and personal.

"...white "privilege". In this framework, whites grant themselves social advantages they universally deny minorities.

You misunderstand the term "white privilege." It is not merely "social" advantages.

Perhaps this will help.

White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack

"I was taught to see racism only in individual acts of meanness, not in invisible systems conferring dominance on my group"
Peggy McIntosh

Through work to bring materials from women's studies into the rest of the curriculum, I have often noticed men's unwillingness to grant that they are overprivileged, even though they may grant that women are disadvantaged. They may say they will work to women's statues, in the society, the university, or the curriculum, but they can't or won't support the idea of lessening men's. Denials that amount to taboos surround the subject of advantages that men gain from women's disadvantages. These denials protect male privilege from being fully acknowledged, lessened, or ended.

Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there are most likely a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there was most likely a phenomenon of while privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.

I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, codebooks, visas, clothes, tools , and blank checks.

There are more entries that detail exactly what "white privilege" is by the experts who study it.

It is more "convenient" for you to package class in with racism so as to minimize the racism aspect. That way you can safely say (so you think) that classism affects everyone, and "racism we used to know it" no longer exists. The use of the disguise of "classism" coincides with the spread of the notion one can be "color-blind" to race. Wrong, it just means one is just as racist as before, merely pretending to ignore the inconvenient fact that color-bound racism still exists and thrives.

One need only look at the reaction to Judge Sotomayor, and other acts of racist behavior to prove the point. You can pretend it doesn't exist, but that is akin to playing ostrich with head shoved firmly in the sand.

Finally, it is ludicrous to think that rich black people, however comforted by the trapping of wealth do not experience racism. They do.

Great post, Eric!

They may have used more couched language, but they were not subtle. To suggest that bringing someone acting legally "to justice" was their aim, is wholly disingenuous. The "justice" these people advocate is vigilante murder.

Today, Terry showed his true colors, and gleefully cheered Dr. Tiller's assassination.

When you persist in creating a demonizing atmosphere, incendiary rhetoric, you are guilty of a hate crime and incitement to violence.

The world could use more Dr. Tillers, men and women who stand up for people who cannot stand for themselves.

It's not just a figment of some screenwriter's imagination -- it is pervasive in all aspects of culture. It affects both sides of the judicial equation: those who commit crime and seek to scapegoat and the jurors who may very well be convicting a person innocent of the crime for which he is charged.

But the critical question stems from this:

"Well it seems to me that we all learn very quickly about the social classes and prejudices that prevail in our society..."

Where and how did you learn this? Who taught you this? When did you learn it? Why do you believe it?

To BevD and Faroff:
This is not a "tit for tat" situation. There is a pattern and a consistency to the fictional black assailant story. The Tawana Brawleys and Crystal Magnums are few and far between. And you look at who is exonerated for crimes they did not commit after hard work by the agencies involved in the Innocence Network, the depth and breadth of problem is even more apparent.

(Pity that you stoop to bring OJ (the new universal poster child for black criminality) into this. OJ did not call the police claiming to have been a victim of a non-existent crime perpetrated by a white person.)

I had forgotten about the "motive" for the Sharon Tate (Charles Manson family) murders: "Manson believed that he would bring about the race war by having his followers slaughter wealthy people in their homes and cast suspicion on black militant groups such as the Black Panthers. In his carefully thought out scenario, Manson saw the blacks winning the war, but being too inept to run the nation. Manson reasoned that the blacks would then turn to him for help and make him ruler. [Wikipedia]"

The "fictional black man" figures in the Jeffrey McDonald murders also.

Except that in the Ashley Todd case or the Charles Stuart case, as in the others, they did start searching for someone who fit the description.

If I understand you correctly, you cast the burden on sociopaths, murders, liars, criminals for the promulgation of this behavior. In your last paragraph you speak of how the lie might affect the jury -- but if the white perpetrator who has blamed the fictional black assailant is before the jury, the affect of the lie is impeach the defendent's credibility. A very different circumstance is presented if the lie is successful and based on the fiction, the lie, a black suspect is facing trial and conviction.

You may not identify with the murders and sociopaths, but would you have identified with the tearful Bonnie Sweeten, or Charles Stuart or Susan Smith on the stand identifying the black "suspect" that carjacked them had their lies been successful? And what would your reaction be if 2 years or 26 years later the falsely accused were exonerated? You see them as "sociopaths" today because their lies were exposed early. But what if they weren't?

It's something more than just convenience. It's something more than just semantics. It's something more than just a lie.

Is it a learned behavior or action? Maybe. Think about it. Bonnie Sweeten told her "lie" in the presence of her 9-year old daughter, who is old enough to know there was no car accident, no carjack/kidnap by two scary black men, and that they weren't in the trunk of a Cadillac. How many other parents have told the lie -- even in the "little white lie" sense -- in front of their kids? About something far more mundane? ("I didn't get promoted at work because some unqualified black guy took my job. Or "Honey, you didn't get into college because some unqualified black kid took your spot.")

Think about how many times you've watched TV or a movie, and see the tough "good guy" cops use "enhanced interrogation techniques" on the scary (or not so scary) black guys, even when the black guys had nothing to do with the crime in question? How many times have you seen the real suspect in the cop drama tell the lie?

How has it become so commonplace as to be predictable (at least from where I sit)?

My question to those of you who are white is how did we (or should I say "you" -- not all of you, but some) become a society where it is considered an acceptable practice, so much so that it borders on "routine," and so commonplace that it is a typical plot twist in movies and television, to fabricate a non-existent assailant who fits a standard profile?

My question to those of you who are not white, is the same, but from the other side of the equation, as a member of the group falsely accused. How did we come to this?

The reason I specifically asked people to avoid getting bogged down in crime statistics (most of which are inaccurate) is so that we might ponder the ease in which that lie rolls so trippingly off the tongue. It is not just that the persons in the examples above lied, it is that they went to great effort to concoct a specific profile they knew would buy them at a minimum a certain amount of time, and at the maximum, would mean they get away with it completely.

How did we get here? What does it say about us? you? them? Is there an inherent or long-ingrained belief -- even when not specifically taught -- that minorities can be scapegoated with minimal consequences? When did we get to the place where "hey, just pin the blame on a made-believe black guy," Is an acceptable action? If not, why is it so common? If people claim to be "color-blind," why are these falsehoods so color-specific?

Questions to ponder. All part of our great national discussion on race.

Desidero does not possess an "informed comparative worldview" and the numerous erroneous statements he made regarding not only US history, but world history prove it.

Having lived all over this globe, including "the south," in cultures not my own, being a student of history, a voracious reader and a consumer of information from minds more learned than mine provide me with a very well-rounded point of view.

Do not assume -- as far too many white southerners do (yeah, I said it)-- that when a black person pushes back on matters regarding the south and or the civil war, that there is "phobia" or fear involved. Those days are long past. (You really stepped in it, with that one, and it is only because it is late evening that I do not give that the thorough reaming that it deserves.)

Your family owned slaves in South Carolina? Big deal. My family once were slaves in South Carolina. And Mississippi and Alabama and Georgia. You know the Underground Railroad? Yeah, I have family that were among the first to make the trip north successfully. And I have family that were freedmen in New England pre-revolutionary war. We can play "can you top this?" all night long. But it's hardly productive.

But since you brought me into this discussion -- in a manner quite different than Desidero or I did with each other -- making an inaccurate and unfounded personal assessment, and since you assumed facts not in evidence, let me set the record straight for you:

What I am is someone wholeheartedly and enthusiastically intolerant of racists, bigots, and fools. They are not corralled by any border or imaginary line. They are not limited to any race or gender or intellectual capacity or geographical location.

I do not cotton to people who assume that they know all about someone based on the color of his or her skin, his or her accent, eye shape, the number of vowels or consonants in his or her name, the church or synagogue he or she does or does not attend, or the person he or she chooses as a lover. I have little patience for people who pretend to be one thing and are, in fact, another. I find people who hold their "heritage" as more sacred and deserving than someone else's, tiresome, and frankly, narrow-minded.

Phobic? Of you? or any other southerner? Hell, no.

Even if he had chosen "strict constructionist" somehow, some way the right would misconstrue it to mean something else:

"Strict construction, you say? What the hell? You mean you're going to appoint someone who has the audacity to actually READ the Constitution instead of just believe what we say is in the Constitution as interpreted by John Yoo and Alberto Gonzalez? The Constitution is not some "construction project." That's not what the Founding Fathers intended. And since when is "strictness" the qualification for a justice? They're supposed to play it loosey-goosey, just wing it."

Helmets and flak jackets on, ladies and gentlemen as the crapola will commence flying in 3-2-1...

and this on Arlington National Cemetary:

"Arlington National Cemetery, in Arlington, Virginia is a military cemetery in the United States, established during the American Civil War on the grounds of Arlington House, formerly the estate of the family of Robert E. Lee's wife Mary Anna (Custis) Lee, a descendant of Martha Washington.

"The federal government dedicated a model community for freed slaves, Freedman's Village, near the current Memorial Amphitheater, December 4, 1863. More than 1,100 freed slaves were given land by the government, where they farmed and lived during and after the Civil War. They were turned out in 1890 when the estate was repurchased by the government and dedicated as a military installation.

In Section 27, there are buried more than 3,800 former slaves, called "Contrabands" during the Civil War. Their headstones are designated with the word "Civilian" or "Citizen".

Also, in the cemetery, there is a Confederate section with graves of soldiers of the Confederate States of America and a Confederate Memorial.[7]

But one can make a critical distinction between southerners in general, and those who continually litigate or re-fight the Civil War, and blame non-southerners for their failings, and apologize for the appalling racist of the confederate and post-confederate south. Perhaps you might try to discern the difference.

However, is there a benefit to discussing the preconception about regional differences? Sure.

I must say I never quite understood the whote Route 128 thing of driving on the shoulder during rush hour to create these ad hoc extra lanes. Fortunately I was able to come to my senses, pahk the cah in the gah-rahge and take the T.

But there is something very different about "personal" racism -- that is where I might hold racist beliefs even when they conflict with the laws and world around me -- and "institutional" or "governmental" racism where normally "equitable" institutions -- the courts, legislative and executive branches of government create and enforce NEW laws to codify racist beliefs and behavior. And the south began to do this almost as soon as Reconstruction began. Now it is true that the US Supreme Court by way of the Dred Scott decision put a federal stamp of approval on this institutional racism, but Jim Crow laws bubbled up from the south, they did not trickle down from the north.

Rural southeastern Ohio is essentially the same as northern Kentucky and West Virginia. It is that poverty-stricken band of land known as Appalachia. But Ohio is also home to a great many colleges and univerisities founded to educate free blacks, and of course it was one of the destinations of the Underground Railroad.

I lied.

I don't care that Des used my name in his post here.

Jumping ahead, Des cannot grasp that Algeria was and is a sovereign country. It was not a "part" of France. It was a colony. And the funny thing about colonies is, they have a tendency to revolt and throw out their overlords precisely because they make the same mistake Des does: believing that by colonizing they are owning.

Des continues to find myriad ways to be an apologist for slavery. He continues to claim that the North was the first to "legalize" slavery. He has yet to explain why the south refused to abolish it when the northern states did so much earlier.

From Wikipedia:

"The principal organized bodies to advocate this reform were the Society of Friends, the Pennsylvania Antislavery Society and the New York Manumission Society. The last was headed by powerful Federalist politicians: John Jay, Alexander Hamilton and Republican Aaron Burr. Thanks to the considerable efforts of the NYMS, New York abolished slavery (gradually) in 1799. In terms of numbers of slaves, this was the largest emancipation in American history (before 1863). New Jersey in 1804 was the last northern state to abolish slavery (again in gradual fashion). At the Constitutional Convention of 1787, agreement was reached that allowed the Federal government to abolish the international slave trade, but not prior to 1808. By that time, all the states had passed individual laws abolishing or severely limiting the trade, all but Georgia by 1798; some of the Southern laws were later repealed. [12]


After the American Revolutionary War, Quaker and Moravian advocates helped persuade numerous slaveholders in the Upper South to free their slaves. Manumissions increased for nearly two decades. Many individual acts of manumission freed thousands of slaves in total. Slaveholders freed slaves in such number that the percentage of free Negroes in the Upper South increased sharply from one to ten percent, with most of that increase in Virginia, Maryland and Delaware. By 1810 three-quarters of blacks in Delaware were free. The most notable of individuals was Robert Carter III of Virginia, who freed more than 450 people by "Deed of Gift", filed in 1791. This number was more slaves than any single American had freed or would ever free.[13] Often slaveholders came to their decisions by their own struggles in the Revolution; their wills and deeds frequently cited language about the equality of men supporting their manumissions. Slaveholders were also encouraged to do so because the economics of the area was changing. They were shifting from labor-intensive tobacco culture to mixed crop cultivation and did not need as many slaves.[14]

The free black families began to thrive, together with African Americans free before the Revolution, mostly descendants of unions between working class white women and African men.[15] By 1860, in Delaware 91.7 percent of the blacks were free, and 49.7 percent of those in Maryland. These first free families often formed the core of artisans, professionals, preachers and teachers in future generations.[16]

The importation of slaves into the United States was officially banned on 1 January 1808.[17]

Continuing to claim that "they started it" (slavery) in no way answers why the south continued it. And it in no way explains the rest of the south's tawdry history with race.

But all of this bantering to and fro about slavery aside, Des claims the rest of us are "ignorant" because we harbor deep seated southern hatred. Again, people like me don't have blanket hatred or contempt for the south, just those who continue to fight a battle in which they are always and forever on the wrong side of history.