Leonce Gaiter's Open Salon Blog

The White Right TAPP Dances Black Truths Out of US History

Mon, 28 May 2012 10:05:55 -0400

The right’s strength is its ability to immerse itself in tribal warmth of sexist, racist, homophobic waters, while simply sprinkling the rest of us with their refreshing mists. And they are refreshing. Admit it. Who hasn’t been pricked by the odd racist thought--when you glimpse the black face behind the wheel of the car that cuts you off, or your male ego takes a hit from a woman. ‘Nigger.’ ‘Bitch.’ They explode like little bombs. Like splinters from the stairwell banister, their sting is sudden, unexpected, and a bit disconcerting.

And then you go on your way. You shake it off, forget it happened. The right’s gift is their ability to reference the embers of all those little bombs, all the perceived slights, the learned and latent bigotry absorbed during our American upbringings. They reference them and, like tiny bellows, reignite the embers to a subtle glow. Just enough to remind us of the root cause of the epithets we mutter in our heads. Just enough to remind you that "they" deserved, if only for reminding you that such ugliness lived inside.

That’s how they seduce the beloved “moderate” voter, convince him or her to pay no heed to that declaration in favor of “Confederate History Month,” or those racist newsletters published under their names. A trip to a black school, a photo-op with some black faces while listening with bwana-like condescension to their plight is enough to convince the soccer mom to ignore the fact that you never condemned your supporters’ bleating insistence that the first black President has no right to hold the office, or that you belong to a church that has yet to repudiate the belief that blacks are cursed by God. Once the embers of contempt are smoldering, it takes very little to convince the majority. The smell of offal isn't so strong when you wear the taint yourself.

With new tactics, the battleground has shifted. Paul Krugman wrote:

”Today, however, the big threat to our discourse is right-wing political correctness, which — unlike the liberal version — has lots of power and money behind it. And the goal is very much the kind of thing Orwell tried to convey with his notion of Newspeak: to make it impossible to talk, and possibly even think, about ideas that challenge the established order.

Thus, even talking about 'the wealthy' brings angry denunciations; we’re supposed to call them 'job creators'. Even talking about inequality is 'class warfare'.

And then there’s the teaching of history. Eric Rauchway has a great post about attacks on the history curriculum, in which even talking about 'immigration and ethnicity' or 'environmental history' becomes part of a left-wing conspiracy. As he says, he’ll name his new course 'US History: The Awesomeness of Awesome Americans.' That, after all, seems to be the only safe kind of thing to say.”

Follow the Eric Rauchway link and you’ll notice the attempts to institutionalize what I call “The American Past Perfect,” or .“the TAPP dance” The TAPP dance is the white right’s attempt to absolve itself (and the America it claims as its alone) of all sins. The TAPP dance insists that America’s literal and figurative white heart is inherently pure, incapable of committing mistakes, sins, or evils, and if it did, well, they should not be mentioned, for to do so is to deny the American Past Perfect, which is un-American, and concomitantly and perhaps more importantly, un-white.

You’ve heard the paeans to America’s halcyon days of the prosperous 50s and early 60s. This was also the era of unquestioned white, male privilege, before the Civil Rights and Women's Right Movements. The privilege part is conflated with that era’s prosperity while conveniently ignoring the economic realities:

· Back then, over 20% of the nation’s workers were unionized (versus today’s 11%)

· Back then, the top marginal tax rate was 91% (versus today’s 35%)

· Back then, capital gains were taxed at 25% (versus today’s 15%).

· Back then, dividends were taxed at near 90% (versus today’s 15%)

If we can just return to those days of blessed exclusion, the right suggests, we can again realize the American Dream of prosperity for all. In fact, a more equitable tax system enabled robust public investment while a strong labor pool protected workers’ rights—all things against which the right fights vociferously.

Today, history is the battleground. How do you convince a populace that up is down, that history isn’t what it is? As conservatives insist that history curricula TAPP dance, black history and therefore black culture, disappear. Slavery was a mere historical “oops” moment, a slip of the historical tongue, nothing to get het up about. American apartheid through the latter-part of the 20^th century? Oh, pooh! Instead, let history texts celebrate the majority for gallantly granting blacks our constitutionally guaranteed rights and praise them for gallantly acknowledging us our status as humans.

If they succeed, we will watch the history that built our culture, as wrapped up in pain as in joy... we'll watch it disappear. If we endured nothing of note, then the results of our endurance are not noteworthy. Our culture can, therefore, comfortably be omitted. Note Mitt Romney’s discomfort on being consistently reminded of black America’s past (and white America’s shame) on our present.

We are an historical people. Our cultural being is shot through with American history. It's been clear for a while that the right's contempt for us has a lot to do with the lie we put to their white, Christian self-image and "American Exceptionals," pure of heart and intent. Our skin and our history prove that Americans are as capable of sub-animal viciousness as any other people on earth. Maybe they can't erase our skin, but they're working hard on erasing the history of which it so unforgivably reminds them.

This is a strange form of cultural ethnic cleansing—one made more onerous by black America’s passivity in preserving and passing on our own culture. The majority is slowly seduced by a whitewashed version of our past, and we, with no codified, independent means of passing it to future generations, follow along. We, too, will eventually believe the lie. We, too, will believe that the past had little effect on us and is unworthy of investigation. We, too, will believe that the horrors from which we often culled greatness were of little note. We’ll believe that the greatness can also be ignored.

Who would have thought that there was another way back to the “Invisible Man.”

Right wing rules for black youths to avoid deserving death

Sat, 24 Mar 2012 13:03:02 -0400

Considering the right wing reaction to the death of Trayvon Martin, I thought it might be useful to collect their wisdom and advice for black male youths:

What black youths must never do in order not to deserve to be shot to death:

1.      Wear hooded clothing

2.      Enter non-black neighborhoods without a non-black individual's permission

3.      Enter a non-black neighborhood without constant accompaniment by a non-black person

4.      Wear baggy pants or other loose-fitting clothing

5.      Sexualize themselves and thereby threaten non-blacks by wearing form-fitting clothing when walking in a non-black neighborhood

6.      Walk in non-black neighborhoods with their hands in their pockets

7.      Look other than straight ahead when passing through a non-black neighborhood for fear of raising suspicion of 'casing the joint.'

8.      Look a non-black person in the eye when confronted for walking in a non-black neighborhood for lacking the accompaniment of a non-black person or for looking from side-to-side

9.      Speak other than when spoken to when confronted by a non-black person for walking in a non-black neighborhood unaccompanied by a non-black person

10.      Display anger, annoyance or irritation at being confronted by a non-black person for walking in a non-black neighborhood unaccompanied by a non-black person

11.   Speak disrespectfully to a non-black person when accosted for walking in a non-black neighborhood with or without hooded, loose-fitting, or form-fitting clothing unaccompanied by a non-black person

12.   Run when pursued by a gun-toting non-black person when walking in a non-black neighborhood unaccompanied by a non-black person

13.   Resist or defend themselves in any way when pushed, shoved, spat upon or otherwise assulted by a non-black person for walking in a non-black neighborhood.

14.   Resist or defend themselves in any way when accosted by a gun-wielding non-black person for walking in a non-black neighborhood

15.   Die other than quietly when a non-black person pursuing them shoots them

16. Have loved ones publicly display horror, grief, or outrage when they are murdered by a non-black person for walking unaccompanied by a non-black person in a non-black neighborhood.

Rufus Buck’s Anti-Black History Month Black History Lesson

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 11:02:32 -0500

For black history month, I present to you a very young man who had a dream—and to achieve it, he murdered and marauded. Half-black and half-Indian Rufus Buck and his gang of 4 black and Native American teens killed both black and white men, and terrified blacks, whites and Indians alike in the Indian Territory during the summer of 1895.

What? How dare I? Not the “first black this,” or the “first black that?” Not some civil rights-era saint, all-forgiving and all-forgetting? Not an entertainer whose struggles and pain are miraculously disappeared?

No. None of the above. He was a young man who, near the turn of the century, formed a multi-racial teenaged gang in Indian Territories to wrest the land back from encroaching whites. His dream was impossible; and he used the same violence to achieve it that he saw all around him. The Rufus Buck gang were childish and vicious, innocent in their naivete and brutal in their outlook. Their 13-day reign of terror is historically fascinating in that it marked the end of the Indian Territory, soon swallowed whole by the land-hungry United States. Their execution marked the end of the judicial tyranny of Judge Isaac Parker, the “hanging judge” of legend. They marked the end of the era of the great western outlaws, like Cherokee Bill, half-black and half-Indian himself. They also shed a rare light on the multi-racial old west of the Indian Territories. No… the Rufus Buck gang were neither saints, nor victims. But they are part of our history—the part we foolishly agree to ignore because it does not fit the normative view of who we ought to be.

I use the opportunity of ‘black history month’ while remaining generally repelled by its execution. Watching a multi-national corporation hoist a commercial about some “good Negro” to feed the mainstream public’s vision of us as saints or willing victims—the two states that absolves America of her sins… it nauseates. It’s been said that American slavery bred modern racism, not vice versa. A very young country whose people consider themselves anointed by God can’t afford to remember the vicious crimes they’ve committed in brutalizing a people, so they revile those who remind them. In modern America, our black faces have been reminders of America’s crimes—crimes in which she shamelessly reveled for the majority of her history, crimes she must forget in order to perpetuate the myth of her perfection in the eyes of an adoring God.

So black history month becomes a paean to revisionist forgetfulness. It’s just a concentrated mirror of our skewed historical presence throughout all 12 months of the year. For we have allowed ourselves to be historically gutted. Our historical passions and fury have been neutered for mass consumption. Historically, we are only pieces of men. Accordingly, slavery, Jim Crow and American apartheid left no bitter taste, for we are all-forgiving, White-Jesus-loving saints subject to no natural human reaction akin to anger. Rosa Parks felt no rage, but was in fact thinking only of bettering white people when she refused to leave her seat on that bus. Martin Luther King channeled no fury, but only sought to cleanse white America as any good servant seeks to serve his masters. Ossie Davis, like Harry Belafonte and many other entertainers, is hailed as ‘prominent in the civil rights movement.’ But you’d never hear that he said of Malcom X, “[he] knew that for a black leader to be effective, you had to frighten the white man.” Let’s not even mention MLK; we have allowed the majority to sanitize him into a parody of himself.

Black history for white Americans is destined to be a lie. It has to be, for too many Americans will accept nothing less. Their national self-image demands that our black history disappear because the truth of it puts the lie to the fantasy of white American cleanliness and perfection. That’s why black history month grates on me so. It’s American kabuki: mainstream media and organizations pretending to honor a history many find repugnant due to the pockmarked reflection it flashes back at them.

So I offer a piece of real history for black history month—warts and all. A young, half-black, half-Indian renegade determined to do the impossible and willing to be as vicious as any white man to reach his goal. His story is prototypically American. It’s a story of violence and innocence, butchery and grace. His is part of the history that dare not rear its head, for it treads perilously close to the truths that, during black history month as in all others, we tirelessly ignore.

Denying the Killer Inside Us

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 10:11:20 -0500

I was asked if I feared alienating my audience with the depiction of violence in my latest novel. I was surprised because I had gone through pains to minimize the actual depiction of violent acts. A novel about a real-life group of notorious teenage terrorists who rampaged through Indian Territory at the turn of the century naturally includes violence in significant quantities. However, I took pains to minimize description of the acts. Instead, I focused on the perpetrator’s motivations and the victim’s reactions. To my surprise, though, far from minimizing the impact of the violence, this seems to have heightened it.

I’ve learned that it’s not fictional violence itself that shocks us. That's usually no big deal. We play unbelievably violent video games and watch a steady stream of shootings, stabbings, rapes, beatings, impalements and traumatic dismemberments via TV, DVD and film. But most of this is faux-violence. It’s violence devoid of effect. It rarely asks that we feel the victim’s pain. Just as importantly, it rarely asks that we comprehend the rage and hate that precipitate the violence. We’re allowed to keep our playful, comfortable distance. This type of violence asks neither that we consider the horror of the act itself, nor the horrors that can beget it. All the blood and flesh is just so much stage paint—a mere plot point.

There is no judgment here; such depictions of violence are dramatically valuable. They have served me well in the past. But my goal here was different. To understand acts of violence and draw from them pity and terror, the audience must feel it. Not the sting of the blade or the bludgeon of the bullet; but the assault on the self and the senses that is such an act. You have to touch the live wire of the victim’s torment and the perpetrator’s rage. I needed an audience to understand why central character did what he did, even as they felt the crushing pain that his acts caused his victims.

On a readers' social networking site, one commenter offered, “to say that I like (this book) would be to condone the actions of the various characters - which I refuse to do.” At first, the comment shocked me. I had never associated liking "The Killer Inside Me," with condoning its characters' actions. Then I realized that this comment only made sense if the reader felt a measure of unwelcome empathy for the perpetrators of the horrible acts from which she sought to distance herself. It meant that she felt indicted by her own potential for empathy for people committing acts considered monstrous. To this reader, empathizing with those who commit butchery—to put herself in their shoes—is to "condone" their acts. It's the same fallacy played out politically at each terrorist attack. If you examine the circumstances that led to the attack, you're vilified as 'excusing' terrorist actions. In fact, you are… examining the circumstances that led to the attack. If, from that examination, you discover that you, too, faced with similar circumstances, might resort to violence, or at least lust after it, you're forced to face the potential killer inside you.

That is the real alienation risk for the writer—that in an age when most of our media lovingly pet our conceptions of ourselves, audiences will not accept work that makes them question their own morality and their own purity.

It's not about the violence. The violence doesn't alienate an audience. It's about our visions of ourselves. Violence we have no problem with. We prove that daily as we ignore our various wars, cheer waterboarding during televised debates and minimize the horror of nuclear devastation. We accept violence; we just also hypocritically deny our capacity to inflict it. If a book challenges that hypocrisy, it will be tagged as "alienating." On the other hand, reinforce the audience's vision of itself as pure, and it's just good old-fashioned, red-blooded American gore—the good kind—the kind we love to watch. When I'm challenged on the violence in the novel, I've learned it's less about the violence per se, and more about forcing the audience to question their own purity, and capacity for what's considered evil. Do that, and you risk alienating those who fear facing the potential for violence in themselves.

Free e-book of "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven" thru 10/6

Sun, 2 Oct 2011 12:10:39 -0400

We're doing a special Happy October book promo with free e-book versions of the historical novel, "I Dreamt I Was in Heaven - The Rampage of the Rufus Buck Gang" through Oct. 6! Click here, and at checkout, use coupon code: WB45M. Hope you enjoy!