{"id":8832,"date":"2010-04-27T13:31:47","date_gmt":"2010-04-27T20:31:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/?p=8832"},"modified":"2019-12-23T15:00:21","modified_gmt":"2019-12-23T23:00:21","slug":"imagine-if","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/2010\/04\/27\/imagine-if\/","title":{"rendered":"Imagine if&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class='__iawmlf-post-loop-links' style='display:none;' data-iawmlf-post-links='[{&quot;id&quot;:3423,&quot;href&quot;:&quot;http:\\\/\\\/cosmicnavellint.blogspot.com\\\/2010\\\/04\\\/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html&quot;,&quot;archived_href&quot;:&quot;https:\\\/\\\/web-wp.archive.org\\\/web\\\/20260306201303\\\/https:\\\/\\\/cosmicnavellint.blogspot.com\\\/2010\\\/04\\\/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html&quot;,&quot;redirect_href&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;checks&quot;:[],&quot;broken&quot;:false,&quot;last_checked&quot;:null,&quot;process&quot;:&quot;done&quot;}]'><\/div>\n<p>Via a number of people on my reading list: <a href=\"http:\/\/cosmicnavellint.blogspot.com\/2010\/04\/imagine-if-tea-party-was-black-tim-wise.html\" title=\"&quot;Imagine if the Tea Party Was Black&quot; -  by Tim Wise\">Imagine if the &#8220;tea party&#8221; was black<\/a>, by Tim Wise. I&#8217;ve excerpted it heavily here, but there&#8217;s much more at the source link.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>\n  Let\u2019s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called \u201cImagine.\u201d The way it\u2019s played is simple: we\u2019ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we\u2019ll conjure &#8211; the ones who are driving the action &#8211; we\u2019ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.<\/p>\n<p>  So let\u2019s begin.<\/p>\n<p>  Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters &#8211; the black protesters &#8211; spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn\u2019t like were enforced by the government? [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>  Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: \u201cHe\u2019s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.\u201d [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>  Imagine that a black radio host were to suggest that the only way to get promoted in the administration of a white president is by \u201chating black people,\u201d or that a prominent white person had only endorsed a white presidential candidate as an act of racial bonding, or blamed a white president for a fight on a school bus in which a black kid was jumped by two white kids, or said that he wouldn\u2019t want to kill all conservatives, but rather, would like to leave just enough\u2014\u201cliving fossils\u201d as he called them\u2014\u201cso we will never forget what these people stood for.\u201d [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>  Imagine that a black pastor, formerly a member of the U.S. military, were to declare, as part of his opposition to a white president\u2019s policies, that he was ready to \u201csuit up, get my gun, go to Washington, and do what they trained me to do.\u201d [&#8230;]<\/p>\n<p>  In other words, imagine that even one-third of the anger and vitriol currently being hurled at President Obama, by folks who are almost exclusively white, were being aimed, instead, at a white president, by people of color. How many whites viewing the anger, the hatred, the contempt for that white president would then wax eloquent about free speech, and the glories of democracy? And how many would be calling for further crackdowns on thuggish behavior, and investigations into the radical agendas of those same people of color?<\/p>\n<p>  To ask any of these questions is to answer them. Protest is only seen as fundamentally American when those who have long had the luxury of seeing themselves as prototypically American engage in it. When the dangerous and dark \u201cother\u201d does so, however, it isn\u2019t viewed as normal or natural, let alone patriotic. Which is why Rush Limbaugh could say, this past week, that the Tea Parties are the first time since the Civil War that ordinary, common Americans stood up for their rights: a statement that erases the normalcy and \u201cAmerican-ness\u201d of blacks in the civil rights struggle, not to mention women in the fight for suffrage and equality, working people in the fight for better working conditions, and LGBT folks as they struggle to be treated as full and equal human beings.<\/p>\n<p>  And this, my friends, is what white privilege is all about. The ability to threaten others, to engage in violent and incendiary rhetoric without consequence, to be viewed as patriotic and normal no matter what you do, and never to be feared and despised as people of color would be, if they tried to get away with half the shit we do, on a daily basis.\n<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Let\u2019s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called &#8216;Imagine.&#8217; The way it\u2019s played is simple: we\u2019ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we\u2019ll conjure &#8211; the ones who are driving the action &#8211; we\u2019ll envision black folks or other people of color instead.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2042],"tags":[14],"class_list":["post-8832","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","tag-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8832"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8832\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelhans.com\/eclecticism\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}