We talk a lot about the dream of a post-race America, but a bumper sticker reading “Don’t Re-Nig In 2012″ proves we’ve got a long way to go.
There’s a photograph making its way around the Internet like wildfire.
A bumper sticker that proudly reads, “Don’t Re-Nig In 2012″.
We don’t know whose car this sticker is on… We don’t know who first took the photograph… But we know what it says about where we are in our country. As much as we want to believe that the election of Barack Obama somehow proves that we’re getting closer to a non-racist society, there is still enough racist sentiment that a product like this is manufactured, purchased and displayed.
Yeah, this may be the work of one unstable individual who thinks it’s okay to refer to anyone by the N-word, let alone the Harvard-educated President of the United States. But we have to wonder at the society that makes it possible, let alone comfortable, enough to cruise around displaying hate so proudly.
What is the proper response to this? What would you do if you met this person in a parking lot, if you looked them in the eye while passing their car where you can see this bumper sticker in plain sight?
Would you say something? Would it make a difference?
Photo courtesy of http://tetrazzini.tumblr.com/
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There should be a way to ensure these morons get tagged, in a bodily way, so that they are easily identifiable when not riding in their vehicles. The bumper sticker identification is a band aid at best. What if these cretins take a cab or public transit? How will we know who they are?
And it should be a nation border issue as well. Their passports should be stamped with this same bumper sticker so they are not inadvertently allowed into civilized countries.
I’m really not impressed with this first attempt.
You think this is bad. Wait until Obama and Derrick Bell and critical race theory and killing white babies makes it to the MSM.
Oh, wait. Never mind.
Dick, I’d appreciate if you actually read Bell before you tried to criticize him and CRT. One of my old professors told me that it’s doing violence to an idea when you argue with its caricature. Basically, if you don’t actually understand a theory and can’t trace its reasoning, you don’t have standing to criticize it. Here’s an excerpt from one of his law review articles that I think exemplifies how we should approach other’s point of view:
Diversity is, then, not about the faculty composition or the school system’s structure. It is about the self. Can I become more insightful, more risk-taking, more self-sacrificing for others through my efforts on this issue? Can I hear opposite views and rethink my own positions, altering them to better align them with the truth as I understand it? In this process, we may become better people; we surely become more human—not the *529 original goal, but an important one—out of which unexpected, unpredictable successes may come.
Derrick Bell, What’s Diversity Got to Do with It?, 6 Seattle J. for Soc. Just. 527, 528-29 (2008)
I think this is a worthy goal, even on an internet forum, but especially on this site. But hey, I’m just a law student who’s actually read his work, so if it’s more convenient to cherry pick quotes and pretend that political pundits actually gave him a fair reading before bashing Obama with Bell’s ideas, go right ahead. I just want it to be explicit that you chose to criticize without understanding when you had other options.
I’d be willing to send you some full text articles if you want to know what you’re criticizing. Here’s another excerpt that I think is very applicable to this topic. His critique of racial division and a tacit ‘us v. them’ rhetoric in politics (for examples, see ANY recent debate about entitlements…it immediately devolves into the Reagan era, fear based, ‘welfare queen’ diatribe) is spot on. I think he’s right, racism is a contributing factor in why so many working class white people vote against their own economic interests. I think it has a lot to do with racism and fear (and you’ve conveniently made yourself an example, from reading your comments) of a loss of privilege, and Bell’s argument does hold up when you look at the evidence. And we haven’t even gotten into structural racism and the difference between “colorblindness” and “disparate effects,” but hey, one thing at a time. Anyway, here’s the excerpt. Again, offer’s on the table if you want any of his law review articles, I have a free Westlaw subscription…
The political significance of these developments has shifted attention from an underlying question of relevance to the discussion of the contemporary role of race in understanding wealth and inequality. Why did so many middle-class and working-class voters, the great majority of them white, vote for the Republican candidate given the party’s rather obvious priority for protecting the already privileged? Many issues come to mind-a large tax cut favoring the wealthy, repealing the estate tax, favoring business over the environment, reforming health care, undermining social security-that should have the working class outraged instead of captivated. The fact is, of course, that both major-party candidates, beyond their rhetoric, had a right-leaning agenda in which there was hardly any mention of some of the most serious problems confronting the nation: opposition to the death penalty, the war on drugs, inadequate minimum wage, targeting drug companies for high cost of prescription drugs, and meaningful reform of election financing. Only Ralph Nader took a strong position on each of these issues. *1266
And yet, I doubt that very many people would dispute that the Republican vote by working class whites was based in substantial part on the belief that the party would better protect them against inroads by minorities. And why not? While feigning interest in black voters, the Republican Party has come to power by parlaying the willingness of whites to blame blacks for the nation’s ills and their own anxieties.
From the message Reagan sent to whites by opening his campaign for the presidency with a speech in Philadelphia, Mississippi, near the site where the three civil rights workers were murdered, to the elder Bush’s use of the Willie Horton commercial, Republicans have hidden their massive redistribution of the wealth upward by gleefully cutting social programs while assuring whites that they were restoring the racial balance through their opposition to affirmative action and their all but open hostility to black people.
Derrick Bell, Racism: A Major Source of Property and Wealth Inequality in America, 34 Ind. L. Rev. 1261, 1265-66 (2001)
Arguing facts and logic against Dick Aubrey is a waste of energy Drew, though I appreciated learning more about Bell as a result of your effort.
Can’t stop me from trying I suppose. I don’t think anything Bell said was all that radical, his observations are in line with what many people say when talking about race, power, and the law. I think the reason he’s been singled out is because he’s dead now and can’t defend his views. You wonder why this didn’t come up in the election or first three years of the term if it was really a bombshell (which it’s not…) and the only thing I can think of that’s changed is that he’s dead, and he can’t correct caricatures of his politics.
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It’s time like this when I have to ask myself, what would the Dalai Lama do? I consider myself quasi-Buddhist, and one of the things that attracted me to Buddhism in the first place is the message of tolerance. Buddhism aside, tolerating the intolerable is a struggle for a lot of liberal-minded people. We believe in free speech and at the same time are appalled by some of the things other people say. So WWDLD? Extend loving-kindness to even the worst of your “enemies.”
Incidentally, I’ve noticed that people are a lot more rattled when you tell them “I’ll pray for you” than by the most well-thought-out, well-delivered argument against their side.
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I suspect the Dalai Lama wouldn’t do what the Duke recommends, namely “Kill’em all and let God sort’em out.”
No? Not so much?
Sad. It seems like such a simple solution. With everyone dead, there’s no problems of a pressing nature anymore. I live next to a cemetery so I know. Those dead people don’t get up for anything. Nothing. So much peacefulness and quiet. A whole planet of the same seems rather optimal some days…
Yeah…I just did an article at GMP allex Tolerating Intolerance. I’d link it and self-promote again but I’m on my iPhone. lol. Needless to say, I agree that everyone, liberal and conservative, have trouble tolerating those who aren’t tolerant of them. However, I also think we can go too far…we do need to identify and fight against intolerant ideas. I just think it’s important not to demonise the people who are saying the intolerant ideas; after all they’re still people.
As for the I’ll pray for you thing…usually it annoys me because it sounds a little bit self-righteous. Like – I’ll pray for you be because you’re so wrong I can’t even talk to you about this issue anymore.
I’m sorry, why are we tolerating the intolerable? Am I supposed to tolerate a bumper sticker that calls the President a nigger? I’m supposed to not demonize someone who uses that language about black people?
I must be misunderstanding what I’m reading here.
As for the Buddhist message of tolerance, from the 14th Dalai Lama: “Buddhist sexual proscriptions ban homosexual activity and heterosexual sex through orifices other than the vagina, including masturbation or other sexual activity with the hand… From a Buddhist point of view, lesbian and gay sex is generally considered sexual misconduct”.
Maybe someone should start attacking the music industry which used the “n” work in a lot of music. Just as the feminists aren’t screeming about the rap music that continues to use the word “bitches” …
I’m color blind. Presidents race means nothing to me. I’m tired of this country promoting racism. MLK was against it. Some of my family m arched with him and I’m surfe he’s rolling over in his grave seeing what’s happening these days.
My wife is of Mexican heritage but she refuses to use that. When she’s asked, her response is “I’m an American”
Just a reminder that “America” starts in Canada and ends off the coast of Chile. So for all intents and purposes, your wife is more American than you.
This reminds me of something Malcolm X said. He was on a televised interview (if I weren’t so lazy, I’d find the clip). To paraphrase, he said, “What do you call an educated negro with a BA or an MA or a Ph.D.? You call him a nigger, that’s what you call him.”
Some people are beyond saving. I’m beginning to think that racism is something that must be bred out. Perhaps, her children will be slightly better people.