Anti-South Asian?

 

Who They Really Are

This is bloody scary. It seems that the Right has now turned on that most model of all model minorities, South Asians. Yes, your Indian doctor, your Bangladeshi dentist, and that programmer from Pakistan are all in the crosshairs. For more on that, the following article: Why the Right turned on Indians From model minority to rapacious menace, by Richard Hanania,

How on earth is this possible?

Probably because the Right is insane. But, no matter why, the important thing is that once again the MAGAs and others are causing serious damage to the American economy, culture, and psyche. They cannot be forgiven for that. 

Killing The Black Middle Class

Killing The Black Middle Class

There’s a fascinating article in a recent issue of Fast Company, How Trump’s mass firings could quickly hollow out the Black middle class: The president has gone nuclear against federal union jobs—historically African Americans’ ladder to economic equality, originally in Capital and Main and written by Mark Kreidler.

The piece looks at how Trump’s furious assault on federal workers and unions is hitting Black Americans hardest. Government jobs have been one of the traditional routes by which African-Americans have entered the Middle Class. Now, those jobs are going away, and they could take the Black Middle Class with them.

The question, of course, is whether this is strictly an accident. Trump and the GOP have waged a war of annihilation on federal workers for a long time. And perhaps the demise of African-American employment is just collateral damage.

Or is it? Could there be more? Could there be a design here? After all, Trump and his MAGAts are no fan of racial equality. Perhaps the point of the war against the civil service (or at least part of the point) is to remove those men and women whose ethnic heritage is distasteful to them?

Perhaps we’ll never know for certain. But, that’s irrelevant. It is clear that the current Administration is a disaster for Black America. Whether that disaster is by accident or design does not, even remotely, change the larger effect.  

“One Meatball…” and other weirdnesses

 In which I explore a silly song...and the hard life of a musical genius.

https://www.michaeljaytucker.com/post/one-meatball-and-other-weirdnesses

Stupidity Prime

I’m a great fan of expertise. I mean, I love to see someone who is just tops in their field at work.

That includes stupidity.

No. Really. If you’re going to do something stupid, well, by Golly, by George, and by Gum, it should be just positively brain-rattlingly stupid. No little silly dimwittedness of the sort that Mother Used To Make. No. It ought to be devastatingly dumb. I mean, in the kiloton class of sheer brain-deadedness.

Warning: Extreme Stupidity Ahead

For example...

In case you missed it, there was a remarkable story out of Baltimore on Monday, June 22, 2020. It seems that a restaurant in that city denied entrance to a mother and her son (he was about nine) on the grounds that the boy was not properly dressed. He had on, you see, shorts, a t-shirt, and athletic shoes. They were also African-American.

The kicker? A white boy of the same age, wearing pretty much the same clothing, had just been served.

The African-American mother used her phone to video her interaction with a member  of the restaurant’s staff...and posted the video to the web. Naturally, it all hit the fan and the owner of the restaurant, Atlas Restaurant Group, had to go into serious damage control mode and has been apologizing like an Evangelical homophobic minister caught in a four-way with two himbos, a hardhat, and a thirty gallon drum of cream cheese. The herby kind.

Now, if you haven’t seen the video, you ought to give it a look (links below), because it is a work of art. In it, the restaurant employee achieves a level of dimness that must be seen to believed. It is a virtuoso performance. One for the ages! The man is unbending, seemingly smug, and utterly unconcerned about the fact that his every word is being recorded for posterity.

You find yourself wanting to take the guy to one side and saying, Dude... dude!...don’t you get it?  That video is going to be on Facebook before the end of the day. It’s going to be all over the world. You’re going to have your fifteen minutes of fame...as Raging Asshole of the Month. And, oh, btw, you just got fired. Maybe not right now. But soon.

To give the poor chap the benefit of a doubt, maybe it wasn’t his idea. Maybe he was just following orders from his manager. But he was still dumb as a box of rocks to do it and he is still going to take the fall for it, whoever was responsible.

So, really, really stupid...

But also, there’s a point here. We are now in an age when you must assume that any interaction is going to be recorded. Which is scary for all of us. But, also, anyone ... particularly anyone dealing with customers who may be members of minorities...is going to have to assume that anything...anything at all!...which remotely looks like racism is going to be seen. And, it will be fatal for your career.

And this is going to be hard for us to learn. (I include myself in that.  Though I’ll do my best.) What worries me, though, is not head waiters...no matter how pompous or foolish...but others, who may be much harder to teach.

Like the military, like the police, like...indeed...

The president.

*

Until next time, onward and upward.



Sources:

“Baltimore restaurant apologizes to Black woman, son after denying them service over clothes,” USA Today, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/06/23/baltimores-atlas-restaurant-sorry-denying-service-black-boy/3240818001/

“A restaurant denied service to a Black boy for his clothes, but video shows a White boy, dressed similarly, was allowed,” CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/23/us/ouzo-bay-baltimore-restaurant-denies-service-to-black-boy-trnd/index.html

~~~



About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

George Floyd and Derek Chauvin Knew Each Other!

Whoa! If you haven’t already seen it, check this out. George Floyd and Derek Chauvin actually knew each other and had quarreled in the past. According to news reports, they had both worked security at a local club. A co-worker says that Chauvin had been extremely aggressive with patrons at the club. Floyd had objected and they’d exchanged words.

This, of course, vastly complicates the whole situation. It means that not only was racism involved, but so was a personal grudge.

What this means for the future is, of course, impossible to say. And I’m no lawyer.

But, I wonder...

Is this now a First Degree Murder case? Could it have even been premeditated?

About me: I’m a writer and former journalist who has published material on everything from computers to the Jazz Age. (Among my small claims to fame is that I interviewed Steve Jobs just after that talented if complicated man got kicked out of Apple, and just before the company’s Board came begging him to come back.)

Please check out my new book, Padre: To The Island, a meditation on mortality, grief, and joy, based on the lives and deaths of two of the most amazing and unconventional people I ever met, my mother and father.

  This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Taking Hate Seriously

Here’s an interesting piece of history. Until quite late, as late as 1940, a surprisingly large number of well-informed people thought that Hitler’s anti-Semitism was more show than real. It was, some people thought, merely a way of stirring up the masses, and would dissipate soon enough.

It made sense, really. Hitler was an Austrian, and an admirer of Karl Lueger, the mayor of Vienna who preached but did not practice anti-Semitism.

Only afterwards, did people realized that Hitler had been, all along, entirely ...and terribly...in earnest.

Why do I bring this up? Well, the amazing thing is how often in history we encounter exactly this sort of situation. A monster comes along and tells us precisely what he...or she...is going to do. But nobody believes him...or her. It is all put down as rhetorical flourish.

And then...and then...too late, we learn the truth.

Which is why I bring it all up now. It seems like we’ve got a few people making similar statements today...calling for violence...or making excuses for violence.

We do see it on the Left. Let’s be honest. It’s there. Seek and you shall find.

But, at least here in America, what I find most disturbing is its presence on the Right... in the statements of certain candidates.

And sometimes I fear that we are, once more, making an error...that we are discounting these remarks, a little too easily...

Because, history seems to show that when someone talks about expulsions, concentration camps, carpet bombing, targeted killings...we need to take them at their word. For they may well mean it.

Or even if they do not mean it, well, soon enough, there may well appear, some dreadful literalist, with no subtlety and no sense of humor, who shall make horribly real what his...or her...mentor considered merely abstract speculation.

And from that, boys and girls, ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, we might never recover.

Dare not speak its name...

I have been following with interest the spate of stories about the sudden emergence of the "N-word" in connection with President Obama. A sticker reading "Don't Re-Nig: 2012" has appeared on car bumpers and on the web. A nationally read blogger posts a cartoon of the president as a chicken-eating spook. And on and on.

So, finally, it is all beginning to break, isn't it? The fog lifts. The concrete appears behind the vast abstraction. The reality: the virulence of the Right, of its hatred of Obama, has nothing to do with economics, nothing to do with being a "socialist," or a liberal, nothing to do with foreign policy or the support of Israel or energy…

It is about Race. It has always been about Race. It always will be about Race.

But, then, we knew that already, didn't we?

We just didn't dare say it.

Note to Liberals and the Left

I've been reading a number of articles lately about the growth of anti-immigrant sentiment …not just in the USA, but around the world. From Switzerland to Japan, there are calls for "them" to be sent back where they came from. All too often there's a touch of racism (or a truckload of it) in the appeals.

Note, this is all happening when the economy is down. And here's the dirty secret of human nature: Times are good, we are open and accepting. Times are bad: the recruiting office of the Waffen-SS is around the corner.

So, note to Liberals and Others who'd like to make the world a better place. Want people to be less bigoted? Enrich them.

The task of the Left, everywhere, and, indeed of everyone of good will, is to create jobs, reduce prices, and give people a sense of purpose, dignity, and wellbeing.

From that, all else will follow.