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Tag Archives: Islamophobia

Assassin’s Creed is the Story of Modern Racism

18 Monday Oct 2021

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Movies, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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Assassin's Creed, Consumerism, Islamophobia, Origins of Modern Racism, Racism


Assassin’s Creed movie poster (cropped with lower resolution, per fair use laws), October 18, 2021. (https://www.deviantart.com/harzi17/art/Assassin-s-Creed-Movie-Poster-625133669)

Where does modern-day racism come from? There’s a recent movie that inadvertently attempts to answer this question, Assassin’s Creed (2016). The film did not do particularly well in theaters, making only $54.6 million in the US, and just under $241 million worldwide. Perhaps the rise of Donald Trump as president made its themes hit too close to home for too many moviegoers. But somehow, the movie’s director Justin Kurzel and its writers unknowingly shot a one-hour-and-fifty-minute crash-course in racism since 1492.

The Knights Templar versus the Assassin’s Brotherhood, a fight between shared bloodlines, Roman Catholicism, and Islam, that is what the game Assassin’s Creed is about. The movie, though, is about much more. It centers the technological science-fiction wonder known as the Animus, a machine that can tap into one’s DNA and find memories passed down generations ago. The Templars use the Animus to find the Apple, the mythical codex that would theoretically allow them to eliminate free will and the ability of people like the members of The Brotherhood to resist their reign. Except that real life has already surpassed art. In 2013, scientists had already discovered that mice and humans can both store memories in a few lines of code within DNA strands across generations. The scientific term for this is transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. 

There is no real-life version of the Animus yet. But it would figure that the Templars would use such a thing for their dystopian ends. The work of the Abstergo Foundation Rehabilitation Center, a subsidiary of The Templars’ corporation Abstergo Industries, fakes lead character Callum Lynch’s (Michael Fassbender) death and kidnaps him, then uses him to go back to 1492 Andalucia to find the Apple. Once Callum goes through this neurological and psychological “regression” to 1492, he embodies his assassin ancestor Aguilar de Nerha. Aguilar was the last ancient known to have possessed the Apple. 

The year 1492 is important, and not just because of Christopher Columbus. It’s the year Spain unified under the joint rule of Queen Isabella I of Castile and King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Castile, as their forces drove the last Moor ruler out of Granada. That victory ended more than 750 years of Arab Muslim and Moorish rule on the Iberian Peninsula, the Reconquista, as Spanish historians have called it. Later that year, Isabella and Ferdinand expelled all remaining Jews who refused to convert to Catholicism. Spanish Muslims faced persecution from 1492 on, and eventually faced Inquisición and expulsion, too. Between 1609 and 1614, Spain forced as many as 300,000 Muslims of Arab, Moorish, and Spanish descent out of the country.

There are at least three sources from which modern-day racism springs. All are in the mix in Assassin’s Creed. The Arab world and the Trans-Saharan Trade, which included enslaved Africans in exchange for goods and knowledge, some of whom ended up in Arabesque Spain. The Iberian world of what would become Spain and Portugal, with a combination of anti-Arab and anti-Moor nationalism, racism, and Islamophobia on regular display. And, the English, the founders of Jamestown, British plantation slavery in North America and the Caribbean, and heavy contributors to the Transatlantic Slave Trade. The Templars’ headquarters, by the way, are in London. 

Alan Rikkin (Jeremy Irons), the CEO of Abstergo and the embodiment of modern racism, not-so-secretly plans to use the Apple to end free will. In a conversation with Ellen Kaye (Charlotte Rampling) the chairwomen of Abstergo’s board of directors, Alan Rikkin discusses the final demise of human freedom. “The threat remains while free will exists. For centuries we’ve tried, with religion, with politics, and now consumerism, to eliminate dissent. Isn’t it time we gave science a try?” 

Notice how father Rikkin does not mention “systemic racism” or “capitalism,” both central in The Templars’ quest to control people over the past 500 years. This oppression disproportionately impacts the Global South, the Black, the Brown, the Indigenous, and non-Christian Europeans. It is reasonable to conclude that these religious beliefs and their thinly veiled racist beliefs are essentially the same.

One cannot help but notice these racism-based intersections. Especially when nearly every character of color in the film is part of The Brotherhood, and nearly every white character part of The Templars. The late Michael K. Williams plays the only African character in Assassin’s Creed, and he immediately brings to light the oppressive mix of religious bigotry and racism. “They call me Moussa. But my name is Baptiste. I’m dead 200 years now. Voodoo poisoner. I’m harmless,” Moussa says while stretching out his words with hand gestures, in introducing himself to Cal. Moussa confirms he and Cal and the other Assassins are prisoners, that the Templars stripped him of his past even as he reclaimed his ancestor’s name, and signaled that they will need to fight their oppressors (any of this sound familiar historically)? 

Another example comes from Dr. Sofia Rikkin (Marion Cotillard), Alan Rikkin’s daughter and the head of the Animus project. “You are living proof of the connection between violence and genetics,” Sofia says to Cal when discussing the murder that led to his faked death and capture. That’s as eugenics as eugenics can get, the story of modern racism, slavery, colonization, and exploitation of people in a nutshell. This is how the social construct of racism becomes biological determinism, somehow superseding the truth that we are all related genetically.

There are people who would rather drink ground glass than admit how the US has its own special blend of white supremacist racism, one it has exported to the rest of the world. The whataboutisms set has zero interest in an actual answer to the question of racism’s origins. They are only interested in deflecting from their own complicity in white supremacist racism. Assassin’s Creed reveals as much as it deflects on how systemic racism has managed to thrive, through religion, capitalism, imperialism, and the elitist narcissism all of these -isms engender. Every American teacher of world history or European history should use Assassin’s Creed in this manner, providing entertainment with subliminal critical race theory hidden well enough for most white supremacists to not notice. I think.

There’s No Starman Waiting in the Sky For Us

20 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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"Send Her Back!" Chant, "Starman", "Walking On The Moon", 45, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Apollo 11, Ayanna Pressley, David Bowie, First Contact, Greenville North Carolina, Ilhan Omar, Islamophobia, Misogynoir, Narcissism, Race Riots, Racism, Rashida Tlaib, Red Summer, The Police, Trump, White Terrorism, Xenophobia


James Cromwell as Zefram Cochrane making first contact with Vulcans screen shot, from Star Trek: First Contact (1996). (http://www.startrek.com/)

This week of the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing has been yet another reminder that humanity’s evolution has not kept up with its aspirations for exploring and colonizing the universe. A week that is supposed to be one of celebrating NASA’s work and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walking on the moon has become a week about the immutability of racism and misogyny (really, misogynoir) in the US and beyond. Telling four Black and Brown congresswomen “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” 45 once again showed his xenophobia and misogynoiristic racism and exposed the -isms of millions of Americans. 45’s campaign rally in Greenville, North Carolina on Wednesday specifically targeted Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and descended into a Ku Klux Klan gathering, as the presidents fanboys and foot soldiers chanted “Send her back! Send her back!” for thirteen seconds.

A century before 45’s latest racist, Islamophobic, and misogynoiristic spewings, and a half-century before the Apollo 11 landing, Whites across the US engaged in Red Summer. It was part of a World War I and post-World War I response to the first wave of Black migration out of the Jim Crow South and Black prosperity across the US. A violently racist response made worse because the US plunged into recession in the two years after the end of World War I. The Fourth Estate trafficked in racist stereotypes around “Negro Man Rapes White Girl,” further fanning the flames of racism and xenophobia in the years around and after the Great War. Whites marched into Black communities to beat up, main, rape, kill, burn down Black businesses, and otherwise terrorize Black men, Black women, and Black families. To call these “race riots” implies that Blacks did the same toward Whites, a lie about as close to the truth as 45 has been in the past 50 years.

East St. Louis, Illinois really set the pace for these “race riots” in 1917. But in the Red Summer of 1919, it was Washington, DC, Chicago, Elaine, Arkansas, Omaha, Nebraska, and dozens of other cities and towns in which Whites went off to show Blacks the true nature of racism. Whites exerted their power and violence on Black populations out of an out-of-this-world narcissism, in that everything belonged to them. They were angry because Blacks had taken “their jobs” and moved into “their neighborhoods.” They also wanted laws changed so that White ethnics couldn’t come to the US and take jobs and depress wages, ultimately pitting White immigrants against Black migrants in these White terrorism efforts.

Sound familiar at all? It should. White terrorist attacks on Blacks in Tulsa (Greenwood, a.k.a., Black Wall Street) in 1921 and Rosewood, Florida in 1923 were the culmination of White supremacist violence stemming from the narcissistic need for dominance and economic distress. The Immigration Act of 1924 effectively shut off immigration from most of Europe, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean in an effort to preserve “White Anglo-Saxon stock” and as a way to appease White men angry about not finding work post-World War I. It was the third anti-immigration bill Congress had passed in the previous seven years.

The parallels between 45 and this week in American racism and the Red Summer of 1919 are enough to prove that humanity is most definitely not ready to meet extraterrestrials from elsewhere in the multiverse. We humans are ill-prepared to make contact with beings with technologies that help them traverse a radiation-filled void in a fraction of the seven years it took the Cassini probe to reach Saturn. We humans lack the emotional, psychological, moral, and spiritual capacity to cope with such a history-altering event. We Homo sapiens are devoid of the humility necessary to meet the challenges that will come after finding out that first contact with an advanced civilization is both an end and a beginning.

Here’s a short list beyond 45 of leading people and recent events that prove humans are as ready for first contact as a newborn baby is for a seven-course meal. Jeffrey Epstein. R. Kelly. Marine Le Pen. Kim Kardashian. Vladimir Putin. Boris Johnson. Xi Jinping. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Nigel Farage. Richard Spencer. Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Rodrigo Duterte. Theresa May. Bashar al-Assad and Syria. Kim Jong Un and North Korea. Jair Bolsonaro and his anti-LGBTQIA work in Brazil. Myanmar’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims. Capitalism. Neoliberalism. Misogyny and misogynoir. Islamophobia and anti-Black and Brown xenophobia. Patriarchy’s foot soldiers. The very need for Black Lives Matter. The limited response thus far to man-made global climate change. Hollywood. Las Vegas. The endless fighting over resources and enslavement of peoples for a narcissist’s dream of independence, freedom, power, and wealth. That’s already enough for me to never want to meet humanity!

Can anyone who possesses a reasonable amount of empathy and knowledge imagine what the most powerful and learned members of an advanced alien civilization would think of humanity’s stewardship of Earth? They’ve heard and seen us in action for at least a century, since humans started broadcasting on wireless radio. In that time, there have been been two World Wars, ethnic cleansing and mass murder (e.g., Stalin’s Five-Year Plans, the Holocaust, China’s Cultural Revolution, Pol Pot and Cambodia, and Rwanda), the Cold War, and the nuclear arms buildup. Powerful nations and corporations have repeatedly exploited indigenous peoples, the most poverty-stricken in Asia, Africa, and the Western Hemisphere, and the planet’s biosphere. I am sure sentient aliens have seen us and feel just as welcome to visit Earth as migrants from Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa, and the Middle East feel in the US and Europe right now.

Is it possible that sentient extraterrestrials might find some exceptional humans potentially worthy? Sure. Science folk like Michelle Thaller, Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, Hakeem Oluseyi, and the late Claudia Alexander come to mind. One might be able to make the case for humanitarians and social justice activists, for the best writers, painters, sculptors, musicians, vocalists, and actors out there. But from a sentient alien’s perspective, why should any of these humans be exceptions? These beings are likely able to use dark matter or dark energy to power faster-than-light spacecraft. They may possess the ability to convert matter to energy and back again at a whim, to make food and weapons out of thin air and bio-waste. They may even be able to fold space and create wormholes and black holes. There’s no way they could see any humans as deserving of first contact.

There is also the real issue of what it would take for an alien civilization to become advanced without blowing itself up in the first place. These advanced beings would be collaborative and cooperative to a fault, would’ve long ago assured equity and inclusion as their reason for existence and exploration. They would likely avoid war-loving civilizations like the ones on Earth, while looking to break bread (or the alien equivalent) with more stable, peaceful, and advanced civilizations out in the galaxy.

They may make exceptions, though, for the most vulnerable of sentient beings and other species trapped in warring worlds like our own. These aliens may decide someday to “rapture up” indigenous peoples, vulnerable minority groups, the poverty-stricken, certain women and children, to save them from the leading Western nations and other developed countries on this planet, who seek to oppress and exploit them. It’s something writers like Octavia Butler and Derrick Bell contemplated for Black and Brown folk. It would be the humane thing— maybe even, the godly thing — to do.

Humans should continue to explore space and its endless scientific revelations and mysteries. But humanity should refrain from colonizing the Moon and Mars, much less anything interstellar. All humanity will end up doing is spreading its Whiteness-driven elitism, racism, patriarchy and misogyny, homophobia, xenophobia, and life-destroying narcissism. The species remains too primitive to be worthy of prime time on a galactic stage. We’ll have to wait for a more just, verdant, and glorious age before first contact will work out well for us. We’re not ready.

The #45 Mix Tape

28 Sunday May 2017

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, music, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"White Discussion", #45MixTape, Capone-N-Noreaga, Destruction, Drake, En Vogue, Fleetwood Mac, Greed, Islamophobia, James Blunt, Lies, Live, Madonna, Misogyny, Narcissism, President Donald J. Trump, Racism, Russia, Sarcasm, Sting, Trump Supporters, Xenophobia


Then candidate 45 hugging US flag at campaign rally (remember, he’s the anti-Midas, everything he touches turns to crap), Tampa, FL, June 11, 2016. (Chris O’Meara/AP, Times Free Press).

I’m changing it up a bit this weekend. With so much focus on the apocalypse that is 45 and his band of greedy, racist, misogynistic, Islamophobia, and Russia-helping yes-men, I have something goofy and meaningful to say. There are already several comprehensive syllabi on Donald J. Trump out, though, so adding my scholarly musings and sources to this almost inexhaustible topic would be a futile exercise. Instead, I have a mix tape (sort of), one that highlights the changes in my music tastes over time and a group of songs that I mostly despise. Just like I loath most of America’s knee-jerk arguments over 45 and his minions from the past two years.

1. “Little Lies” (Fleetwood Mac, 1987). From their Tango In The Night album. Christine McVie sounds like a shot dog on this song (and Lindsey Buckingham doesn’t sound much better). But this was a Top-5 hit on Billboard in 1987, around the same time Trump was likely being turned by Vladimir Putin and the KGB in the former USSR. And, the song’s theme is pretty obvious.

2. “Live to Tell” (Madonna, 1986). Not exactly my favorite artist, but a one-time favorite song from the one-time “Material Girl” for me three decades ago. After several sources quoting the deposed Michael Flynn, “he has a story to tell,” I remembered Madonna’s lyrics, “I have a tale to tell.” Come to think of it, doesn’t Jared Kushner have a tale to tell about his and 45’s “thousand lies?”

3. “Spies Like Us” (Paul McCartney, 1985-86). Proof positive that Baby Boomers will vote for anything, this piece of poop was a Top-10 hit in January 1986. It’s also emblematic of the theme of ineptitude and macabre humor that runs through the song, representing the movie by the same title, and Flynn, Kushner, Carter Page, Roger Stone, and the rest of the monolithic bloc of 45’s White men.

4. “Russians” (Sting, 1985-86). Why? Because Russians (maybe with the exception of Josef Stalin and Putin) “love their children too” — didn’t you know? But they love messing with our corrupt democracy even more.

5. “Oops!…I Did It Again” (Britney Spears, 2000). God, I have no idea why anyone would’ve ever liked this zit-popper. But the then-eighteen-year-old Spears was prescient with the line “I’m not that innocent.” Neither is 45. He made be a narcissistic buffoon who can’t put two coherent sentences together with a pen, two pieces of paper, Scotch tape, and a flashlight. But he knows where his money’s coming from, no?

6. “Just A Friend” (really, “Jus’ a Friend,” Biz Markie, 1989-90). Same theme as Britney Spears’, with a twist of crossover appeal, a ridiculous baroque get-up, and off-key singing that could only be topped by NBA Hall-of-Famer (and internalized racist) Charles Barkley. But it captures perfectly the love affair between ditto-headed supremacist Americans and 45 (it doesn’t go the other way, of course).

7. “White, Discussion” (Live, 1994). A bit of my favorite grunge, which I have used before. It applies to the folks, the so-called American liberals ready to blame non-voters, third-party voters, and Trump supporters for the rise of 45. Still, many of them are to blame also, because most of them aren’t liberal. If you supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 based on principles, and not out of pragmatism, you are not a liberal, and have been voting in center-right candidates for decades. As the song goes, “look where all this talking got us, baby.”

8. “Stranger In Moscow” (Michael Jackson, 1996-97). Jackson’s introspective song applies here as well, because, well, he uses Russia and the theme of isolation throughout. Except in 45’s case, he likes it that way. And apparently, so does Russia.

9. “Lies” (En Vogue, 1990). Trust me, it fits! (s/o to Dawn Robinson).

10. “Thug Paradise” (Capone-N-Noreaga/Tragedy Khadafi, 1997). The lyrics below say it all:

I twist the truth, I rule the world, my crown is called deceit
I am the emperor of lies, you grovel at my feet
I rob you and I slaughter you, your downfall is my gain
And still you play the sycophant and revel in my pain
And all my promises are lies, all my love is hate
I am the politician, and I decide your fate

Supporters and sycophants beware: 45 is coming for you, in a steamroller with a 700-horsepower engine going one hundred.

11. “Fake Love” (Drake, 2017). I’m a Aubrey Graham fan. I can’t stand Drake. Still, this release from More Life should be required listening from 45 supporters who think they’re not racist, misogynistic, xenophobic, or narcissistic. He also has a song on this album titled “Portland,” though I seriously doubt he was thinking about this weekend or Richard Collins III.

12. “Waterfalls” (TLC, 1995). Yep, yep, yep. Both 45 and MAGA-types have been chasing illusory rainbows and torrents off jagged edges, and damning everyone who they perceive as a threat along the way. And they’re both on a one-way trip.

13. “Don’t Forget Me When I’m Gone” (Glass Tiger, 1986). This is the song 45 should play whenever he finally leaves office, whether by resignation, impeachment, and/or force. As everything 45 touches turns into crap, Glass Tiger’s Top-10 schlock cannot be made any worse. Plus, not even Glass Tiger would complain about 45 using their crappy music.

14. (Bonus Track) “No Bravery” (James Blunt, 2006). 45 is part of a continuum, one that stretches through all of American history. On the international stage, though, it has been one of constant chest-thumping while killing innocents in the name of freedom or national security. Though Blunt’s was about fighting for the UK, the song has much more applicability in the US. We have so much blood on our hands, and 45 means to add to this fetid river on the domestic and international frThe #45 Mix Tapeonts.

If Blacks Should “Go Back to Africa,” Whites Should Go to Australia

02 Wednesday Nov 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race

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"Go Back to Africa!", American Narcissism, American Revolution, Ancestry, Asylum, Australia, Australian Immigration Policies, DNA, Donald Trump, Hyper-Patriotism, Immigration, Islamophobia, Migration, Racism, Systemic Racism, UMUC, White Man's Country, World History, Xenophobia


Go Back to Africa! Go Back to Mexico! cartoon, 2003. (Luis Castellon; http://google.com).

Go Back to Africa! Go Back to Mexico! cartoon, 2003. (Luis Castellón; http://google.com).

It is part of the racism, narcissism, and stupidity of many US Whites to respond to protests, die-ins, boycotts, and even the most minor criticisms of systemic racism and oppression with “Go Back to Africa.” Or, “If you don’t love America, then leave,” as if most Blacks have a real choice. The amount of ignorant cruelty in these knee-jerk responses says as much about the individual racism of these supposedly right-standing Americans as it does about their comfortability with systemic racism and the psychological — if not material — benefits these Whites draw from Black suffering. Or, Native American suffering, as has been the case with the response of Whites to the Dakota Access pipeline protests over the past couple of months. Or Latino suffering, with chants of “Build that wall!,” “Send them back!,” and “Kick them out!” by Donald Trump’s exclusively White supporters for more than a year.

A few years ago, I had a White student in a World History course who was upset by my lecture about the historical consensus that the American Revolution wasn’t as transformational an event as Americans pretend. The student was so caught up that told me to “Go back to Africa” after the class. The lecture was about the nature of revolutions, and per usual, I compared the American, French, and Haitian Revolutions, and used various measures to compare their impact on the social order, on political systems, and on the social mobility of the citizenry after the fact. And as usual, I showed that there was much more change in France and Haiti (the latter the first successful slave-led revolution in modern history) than there would be in the new US until the Civil War.

But I had shattered a student’s worldview of America as always good, and the American Revolution and the US Constitution that followed it as part of some predestined, divinely-inspired, genius-infused plan of greatness. The result was the student yelling at me, “You’re anti-patriotic!,” “You don’t love America!,” and “If you don’t love America, you need to get out!” I mostly ignored the student’s racial Tourette’s, and got to the heart of their issue: a mediocre grade on a paper assignment and their complete misunderstanding of US history in the context of world history.

23andMe sample results, November 2, 2016. (http://ForumBiodiversity.com).

23andMe sample results, November 2, 2016. (http://ForumBiodiversity.com).

The student’s issue, though singularly unusual for me in a classroom setting, is something Blacks hear from Whites in everyday settings literally every day. Like selfish, brattish five-year-olds, many Whites claim everything and everyone as their playthings, and if we disagree, we should leave, we should suffer. But “Go back to Africa?” Even without DNA testing, demographers know half of the 44 million Blacks in the US are partly White, and about one in eight are part Native American. In my case, should I go back to Nigeria, Ghana, or the Ivory Coast, and to what group? Igbo, Yoruba, Wolof? Should I drill down, find that I’m at least one-eighth Choctaw, and apply for tribal membership, so I can live on a reservation in Oklahoma? Or should I sue the estates of the Scotch-Irish assholes who came to the US between 1795 and 1818 for owning my ancestors, for their crimes against humanity and for reparations, and then move to Edinburgh or Dublin?

No, I don’t have to leave at all. As James Baldwin said, “I insist on the right to criticize” the US “perpetually”. But if the White folk who firmly believe Blacks, Latinos, and even Native Americans ought to leave, maybe they should buy a one-way ticket to someplace that will make them feel even more at home than Europe. For these “Leave America [insert racial epithet]” people, they should seriously consider Australia. Seriously. Australia is perhaps the closest America’s Whites-first people can get to a “White man’s country” or a White person’s utopia they can find. Sure, there’s also Europe, but European immigration policies would likely lead to a high-rejection rate, due to lack of skills, higher education, and no need for political asylum.

Then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard not welcoming migrants and asylum seekers cartoon, June 30, 2012. (Bill Leak, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/).

Then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard not welcoming migrants and asylum seekers cartoon, June 30, 2012. (Bill Leak, http://www.theaustralian.com.au/).

In Australia, the image of the rugged White individual remains in full bloom. Their immigration policies are very much the ones Trump’s almost exclusively White supporters would go for. In Australia’s case, anyone without a passport or a visa coming to their shores by boat finds themselves in detention centers in the remote Southwest Pacific island nation Nauru or on Los Negros Island in Manus Province, off Papua New Guinea. For those with visas who’ve committed minor crimes like a traffic violation, those visas can be revoked automatically, and those people can be sent to deportation centers on Christmas Island (off the southwest coast of Indonesia, but an Australian territory), or in remote parts of Australia (less likely). Everyone from asylum seekers from Iran, Iraq, and Syria to Britons and New Zealanders arrested for misdemeanors have all been caught up in Australia’s Migration Act, its Pacific Solution, and its post-Pacific Solution solution.

Now this is a country for American White folk who want a country mostly in line with their values. You just have to leave for Australia. One caveat, though. In 1996, Australia passed the National Firearms Agreement, which restricted ownership of semi-automatic and automatic weapons. But that shouldn’t matter. Whiteness should trump all for Whites who would take up my offer to leave for Australia, a continent and country of 24 million, a place that is 92 percent White.

We Were Never United

11 Sunday Sep 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, culture, Eclectic, High Rise Buildings, New York City, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion

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"Never Forget", #NeverForget, 9/11, Archetypes, Atlanta, Genocide, Greyhound Bus, Holocaust, Hyper-Patriotism, Ignorance, Islamophobia, Media, Navel Gazing, Racism, Sikhs, Stereotypes, Tropes, Xenophobia


9/11 Memorial reflecting pool (w/ reflection of Freedom Tower off building straight ahead), August 5, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

9/11 Memorial reflecting pool (w/ reflection of Freedom Tower off building straight ahead), August 5, 2014. (Donald Earl Collins).

The media trades in archetypes, stereotypes, and tropes the way an alcoholic can become drunk by just smelling ethanol from a block away. It’s been so true around every 9/11 anniversary that it’s somewhat sickening.

There are two tropes the mainstream media has used to keep Americans in a perpetual state of fear and hyper-patriotism since that gruesome second September Tuesday in 2001. One is the theme of “Never Forget” (and the most obvious Twitter hashtag ever). The only other times the mantra of “Never Forget” normally comes up is either in reference to Jews and the Holocaust or to the systematic genocide Native Americans experienced. It should also come up for Blacks and Africans regarding the Middle Passage and slavery, Aborigines in Australia, and other groups who’ve experienced the wanton destruction of their lives and culture in the relatively recent past. Of course Americans shouldn’t forget what happened on 9/11. Nearly 3,000 people died on that tragic day. But 5.9 million Jews, 8-10 million Native Americans, untold millions of Africans, Aborigines, and other groups? Not exactly a fair comparison. If we cannot consistently have empathy and sympathy for the plight of others who suffer and die in the thousands or millions — like with Syrians, Iraqis, South Sudanese — then what does “Never Forget” really mean beyond an extravagant display of navel-gazing?

The second trope the media sells Americans every year is the idea that we “came together” in the weeks after 9/11 like never before. This is some high-grade bull crap. Maybe White Americans did. Maybe Americans who saw Arab Americans, Sikhs, Black and Latinos who looked like they could be Arabs united. But to say that the US “united” in a common bond to bring each other peace in a grand display of patriotism belies the reality of what happened in the six weeks between the attacks and the passage of the USA Patriot Act.

The most poignant moment of my own 9/11 experience was on a fifteen-hour Greyhound bus trip I took from Atlanta to DC after the government grounded commercial airplanes. There was a Sikh man on our bus, who got on somewhere between Atlanta and Charlotte, North Carolina. Two men, one White and one Black, tried to get in the face of this man and blame him for what happened in New York, in DC, and in Western Pennsylvania. I literally had to get in between these dumb asses to keep them from doing worse than their ridiculous name-calling. If this is what the media meant/means by Americans “uniting” after 9/11, then, yes, we did, if only to show our religious and ethnic ignorance, to vent our not-so-subtle hatred and intolerance.

This was some of what I wrote in the days after 9/11 and my wonderful bus trip up I-85/75.

If we as Americans continue to commit and condone through our silence acts of hatred against Arab Americans, are we much better than the tortured souls who flew four Boeing jets as weapons of mass destruction, all in the name of Allah? If we are to defeat terrorism as a nation and a world, we must also defeat its roots, fear and hatred. If we are to be one undivided and multicultural nation united against terrorism, we can no longer tolerate incidents of terrorism against one another, no matter how much we hurt.

Welp, I was wrong. We would “Never Again” condone acts of terror against our own citizens, right? Whether through the systemic use of law enforcement as death squads against Blacks or Latinos, or the occasional White vigilante dispensing their own form of racist justice? We would unite to stop White supremacists from blowing up mosques, synagogues, and temples, to stop other Americans from harassing Arab American citizens and Sikhs for their open display of their First Amendment religious freedoms, no? We Americans would stand up for the rights of those who protest in opposition to existing examples of lethal oppression, because the American flag is about much more than the US military? Yeah, right!

Americans have proven that “united” and “never forget” are proxies for our societal narcissism. It runs as deep as anything that has taken root in American culture, including racism, individualism, and xenophobia. For me, at least, it is why media mantras like “united” and “never forget” ring hollow, despite my memories of the week that was 9/11.

 

“Fear of The Unknown” or “Other” = Inhumanity

09 Saturday Jul 2016

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Work, Youth

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"Fear of the Other", "Fear of the Unknown", #AltonSterling, #PhiladoCastile, American Narcissism, Black Box, Dallas, Duquesne University College of Education, Empathy, History of American Education, Humanity, Inhumanity, Islamophobia, Racism, Southern and Eastern European Immigrants, Teaching and Learning, Xenophobia


A black box with question mark, a certain "fear of the unknown," July 9, 2016. (http://socialcapitalmarkets.net).

A black box with question mark, a certain “fear of the unknown,” July 9, 2016. (http://socialcapitalmarkets.net).

The phrases “fear of the unknown” or “fear of the other” has been something that I’ve been familiar with as long as I’ve been in the classroom. So many essays, so many discussions, so many presentations where these stock phrases have greeted me in my capacity as instructor, professor, facilitator, administrator, and public speaker. Ultimately, the use of these all-too-often used phrases reflects the inability of the people who speak and write them to see other people as Homo sapiens, thus diminishing their humanity in the process.

The first time I seriously encountered either phrase, though, was in my second semester of teaching History of American Education in the College of Education at Duquesne University for MAT students. It was the fall of 1998, and I was teaching a required education foundations course (I was also doing Multicultural Education that semester). To be sure, there were a couple of veteran teachers who didn’t like having a twenty-eight year-old Black man telling them about the marbled history of their profession and the institutions for which they served as K-12 teachers. Some of their bigoted evaluation responses disclosed as much.

It was the week I lectured on the Southern and Eastern European immigrant experience in America’s emerging public school systems between roughly 1880 and 1930. In going through the efforts of educators to literally beat out of these children the language of their mother countries (e.g., Italian, Yiddish, Greek, Polish, etc.) while sorting them into lower intellectual tracks within public schools, I noted the anti-immigrant xenophobia among WASPs at that time. One of my students during discussion tried to explain it away as a WASP “fear of the unknown.” I asked, “What was the unknown? Were these immigrants aliens?” — in this case, I meant “extraterrestrials.”

Data Mining/Fear of the Unknown cartoon, Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News, July 6, 2013. (http://adamzyglis.buffalonews.com/2013/07/06/data-mining/).

Data Mining/Fear of the Unknown cartoon, Adam Zyglis, Buffalo News, July 6, 2013. (http://adamzyglis.buffalonews.com/2013/07/06/data-mining/).

The student didn’t really answer my question, as if “fear of the unknown” needed no explanation. But on the paper related to the experiences of the children of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, Black migrants, and working-class women, over and over again, the phrase “fear of the unknown” kept showing up. What made this use of phrase even more disappointing was an even more sobering Western Pennsylvanian reality. Most of my students were the descendants of Southern and Eastern European immigrants, some of whom were old enough to have had contact with grandparents who must have recounted their experiences with xenophobia in public education. That these students couldn’t possibly see the inhumanity of the phrase “fear of the unknown” made me question whether these current and future teachers should be in a classroom at all.

Luckily, I did manage to reach a few of my more skeptical students around these sorts of issues as this course progressed. After all, most teachers really do want to help their students. A couple even wrote me notes after slamming me in their evaluations about how my History of American Education course had opened their eyes to inequality and social reproduction in K-12 education.

Since then, I have remained keenly aware of when students, colleagues, public speakers, and fellow administrators (specifically in the context of the nonprofit world) have said or written the “fear of the unknown” or “fear of others” phrases. Mostly, it’s not in the context of White ethnics from an era in which “White” mostly meant “White Anglo-Saxon Protestants.” Over the past fifteen years, I’ve seen and heard “fear of the unknown” in reference to Blacks, Latinos viewed only as free-loading immigrants, and Arab-Muslim Americans as US-hating terrorists. There have been students who have justified the race riots of the not-so-recent past (the ones where White mobs stormed into Black neighborhoods and burned them out while maiming and killing Black men, women, and children) with the phrase “fear of the unknown.” Or co-workers who’ve explained away their xenophobia or homophobia as a natural “fear of the other.” Or public speakers who’ve explained Islam as if it were a magical black box that churns out terrorists the way Detroit used to turn out automobiles.

Caravaggio's Narcissus (1594-96) , May 15, 2011. (Masur via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Caravaggio’s Narcissus (1594-96) , May 15, 2011. (Masur via Wikipedia). In public domain.

Stop it. Just stop it. What does “fear of the unknown” really mean? That you didn’t know that Black Americans were human beings with a need for work, education, housing, sleep, air to breathe, and food to eat? That you couldn’t conceive of Latinos as a group of folks who’ve been part of the American landscape (specifically Texas and the southwestern US) for far longer than there has been a US? That you can’t contemplate the idea that Arab Muslims have just as much right to exercise their First Amendment rights to freedom of speech, religion, and assembly as any “red-blooded American?”

Using the phrase “fear of the unknown” says more about the people using it than it does about the “others” they attempt to describe as “unknowns.” All anyone really needs to know is that the so-called others are human beings. To say “unknown” or “other” means than you think you are superior to these “unknowns.” Or, conversely, that these “other” humans are not “normal,” that they are defective or not quite your equals. When groups of humans attempt to justify inequality or their fear with phrases like “fear of the unknown” or “fear of the other,” it means they have little or no empathy for the “unknown” or “other.” And when we as humans can cut ourselves off from other humans in this way, doesn’t that make us less humane, more “other” because we believe ourselves to be normal, even special, and therefore, better, than these “unknown others?”

Of course, there are tremendous psychological and material advantages to seeing other humans as “unknowns” and “others.” This week of #AltonSterling, #PhiladoCastile, and #Dallas has been proof positive of the value of some lives versus “unknown others.” The truth is, no Homo sapiens live in black holes. Unless those with the power to cut off empathy to their psychological and material advantage make a mental home for us there.

Whiteness, Where “That’s So Raven” Meets “Real Time”

11 Saturday Oct 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, culture, Eclectic, Patriotism, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"New Black", African-American, American Narcissism, Atheism, Ben Affleck, Bill Maher, Black, Blackness, Claude Steele, Culture of Poverty, Culture of Violence, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Disidentification Hypothesis, Islamophobia, Labels, Narcissism, Pharrell Williams, Racism, Raven-Symoné, Real Time with Bill Maher, Reza Aslan, Stereotype Threat, unspecial American, Whiteness, Xenophobia


Black square, or Black is the new Black, June 2014. (http://kennyali.com/).

Black square, or Black is the new Black, June 2014. (http://kennyali.com/).

Why we ever give voice to the vapid and vain I still don’t fully understand. In the past week, we’ve allowed Raven-Symoné (of The Cosby Show and That’s So Raven fame) and Bill Maher (host of HBO’s Real Time with Bill Maher and a mediocre stand-up political comedian) to determine our discourse on race, racism, Islam, atheism and terrorism. Proving once again the power of Whiteness in our racially narcissistic nation.

Raven-Symoné certainly isn’t the first Black celebrity or entertainer to declare herself “not African-American” or Black, to Oprah or to the rest of the world. Morgan Freeman’s been making statements rejecting labels like “Black actor,” the term “African American,” and even Black History Month, going as far back as interviews in support of Glory (1989) and Shawshank Redemption (1994) (of course, he also was making the point that he’s an American first). Raven-Symoné isn’t even the first Black entertainer to say they’re “not Black” or “not African American” in 2014. Pharrell Williams holds this distinction, as he allegedly represents the “New Black,” whatever colorblind racist nonsense this is.

Raven-Symoné on Oprah's Where Are They Now, October 5, 2014. (http://www.billboard.com). Qualifies as fair use - picture directly related to subject matter, and of low resolution.

Raven-Symoné on Oprah’s Where Are They Now, October 5, 2014. (http://www.billboard.com). Qualifies as fair use – picture directly related to subject matter, and of low resolution.

It all points to a phenomenon I’ve been calling the “unspecial American” over the past twelve years. The idea that we can discard labels, histories and cultures in an effort to make ourselves unique or special individuals. All of this is born out of a racial narcissism, one which afflicts the most vulnerable to this psychosis — the famous and the wannabe famous. Maybe there’s a bit of internalized racism to this, too — that’s clearly speculation to be sure. But that obsession to be unique, to declare oneself above constructs and labels, but then to latch on to the term “American” as if the world might forget? It reflects on some level stereotype threat, not to mention the defensive posture of someone like Raven-Symoné attempting to preserve their income and elite social status.

Maher’s take on religion, especially Islam, isn’t unique. The idea that he can claim this his Islamophobia has nothing to do with race — his own Whiteness/Jewishness or that of his brown-skinned Semitic cousins — is what makes Maher’s xenophobic argument a specious one. Maher’s is a culture of violence argument, one that attempts to combine the foundational tenets of Islam with the actions of terroristic jihadists in a sweeping indictment of at least half a billion people. HBO and Maher’s friends and fans have let him get away with this ridiculous line of thinly veiled racism and Islamophobia for years. Yet if Maher made the same kind of argument about Blacks, poverty and crime — the culture of poverty hypothesis proposed by the likes of the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan in the 1960s — he’d probably lose his show.

"Violence is not our culture," 2011. (Wendy Harcourt via http://http://www.ips.org/).

“Violence is not our culture,” 2011. (Wendy Harcourt via http://http://www.ips.org/).

That Maher has no sense of history or understanding of human nature isn’t surprising. He’s a stinking comedian, not a historian, political scientist, religious studies professor or philosopher. At this stage of his career, I’d make a better stand-up comic than Maher would a critic of any culture or religion. That Maher has found himself in arguments with Ben Affleck and Reza Aslan is telling. Maher in his late-fifties has become Ronald Reagan — an arrogant White male who firmly believes in the primacy of his brand of White culture above all others.

Both Maher and Raven-Symoné should take a long look at history and learn from it. Raven-Symoné should learn that Black celebrities who deny the existence of racial constructs tend to crash into a few barriers during their lifelong journeys. Maher should look at violent examples of atheism — the French Revolution, the Spanish Civil War, Stalinism, among others — and ask if these were the product of narcissism and violent repression or the product of a culture of violence based too heavily on the reliance on the scientific method for ultimate truths. And we should continue to ask ourselves why we ever take people like Raven-Symoné and Maher seriously at all.

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Boy @ The Window: A Memoir

Places to Buy/Download Boy @ The Window

There's a few ways in which you can read excerpts of, borrow and/or purchase and download Boy @ The Window. There's the trade paperback edition of Boy @ The Window, available for purchase via Amazon.com at http://www.amazon.com/Boy-Window-Donald-Earl-Collins/dp/0989256138/

There's also a Kindle edition on Amazon.com. The enhanced edition can be read only with Kindle Fire, an iPad or a full-color tablet. The links to the enhanced edition through Apple's iBookstore and the Barnes & Noble NOOK edition are below. The link to the Amazon Kindle version is also immediately below:

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Boy @ The Window on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Boy-The-Window-Memoir-ebook/dp/B00CD95FBU/

iBookstore-logo-300x100

Boy @ The Window on Apple's iBookstore: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/boy-the-window/id643768275?ls=1

Barnes & Noble (bn.com) logo, June 26, 2013. (http://www.logotypes101.com).

Boy @ The Window on Barnes & Noble: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/boy-the-window-donald-earl-collins/1115182183?ean=2940016741567

You can also add, read and review Boy @ The Window on Goodreads.com. Just click on the button below:

Boy @ The Window

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