Posts by Joe:

Laughing at Racism

March 13th, 2010

It is hard to find anything to laugh about when it comes to racism and anti-racism, but damali ayo (her capitalization) has put together some humorous and satirical books, How to Rent a Negro, and the 2010 book, Obamistan! Land without Racism, to demonstrate the nonsense about a post-racial world with humor and insight.

She has an art background, and has also been involved in eco-activism. Her website describes her approach as “Now Art”:

She describes Now Art as being immediate, participatory, and engaging social issues. Ayo believes that “art should make you think and feel.” She eschews art that is primarily for decoration. She believes that artists and comedians have a special task to push our culture to understand itself in order to change itself.

One of her interesting “Now Art” pieces is a

free practical guide of ten steps to improving race relations titled I Can Fix It! This guide gives ten simple solutions to address our current “third grade level of race relations.” … damali brings the I Can Fix It! guide [download from here] to life in her stage shows where she uses humor, stories, and slides to inspire people. Presented simply and directly, ayo’s approach to race relations is unforgettable. She makes people pay attention to what is going on inside and around them and to take responsibility for changing it. And damali has plenty of first-hand experience doing just that- she started at a young age by integrating her school’s doll collection with Black Raggedy Ann and Andy.

The commentaries by numerous whites on her book point up the impact of even a humorous look at white racist stuff on many whites. The positive and confirmation comments from people of color and some whites are even more interesting and revealing about its truths. Strategies against racism come, and need to come, in many different forms.

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Role Models and Mentors for Black STEM Students: College Racial Climates

March 12th, 2010



Inside Higher Education has a summary piece by Scott Jaschik on a national data analysis by Cornell Ph.D. student, Joshua Price:

A constant theme of reports about math and science is that the United States will have a large enough supply of scientists only if it does a better job of attracting black and Latino scientists …. Many of these reports note that large shares of black and Latino high school students don’t receive the kind of preparation they should in math and science.

This lack of preparation and/or related role model and mentoring factors likely extends to the college level, as Price’s research clearly suggests:

The study finds a statistically significant relationship between black students who plan to be a science major having at least one black science instructor as freshmen and then sticking to their plans. The finding could be significant because many students (in particular members of under-represented minority groups) who start off as science majors fail to continue on that path — so a change in retention of science majors could have a major impact.

Jaschik continues:

Price analyzed data on more than 157,000 students who enrolled as first-time freshmen in one of the 13 four-year universities in Ohio between 1998 and 2002 and who said that they intended to major in science, technology or mathematics. He then examined whether those black students who had a black instructor … were more likely to stick with their planned STEM major than those who did not. For purposes of the study, “instructor” had to be the person — typically but not always a professor — who was responsible for a course.

Price found no gender effects, but he did find another significant effect, after controlling for various factors:

… black students who had at least one black science instructor as freshmen were statistically more likely to continue on as STEM majors than those who did not. … black STEM students were more likely than white students to end up in STEM courses or sections led by black instructors, again suggesting a key role for these black science professors. … In an interview, Price … [said] that the impact of having a black instructor could come from a “role model effect” or from a mentoring effect.

Neither the article nor the study mentions the numerous other factors that enter into this institutional-racism reality in our historically white colleges and universities. There is the problem of the hostile racial climate that scattered evidence suggests is strong in departments where there have historically been few students of color. This doubtless greatly affects the persistence of many. (To my knowledge, there is no systematic research on variation in this climate by department in historically white institutions–another area for research if you looking for an important project.) Still, our field research on several historically white universities shows that it is a common problem generally for black students, undergraduate and graduate.

Researchers have also shown that this hostile racial climate also affects, often greatly shapes, the reality of too few faculty of color in most departments, not just so-called STEM departments. Since faculty of color often find these historically white campuses difficult places to teach, indeed to be at, it is not surprising that students of color frequently find few faculty of color there. Research indicates, again and again, that the U.S. higher educational system is still fundamentally and deeply racist in its structures and everyday operations. No post-racial America there.

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Faking Multiracial Democracy? More Proposals for Educational Reform

March 10th, 2010



Education Secretary Arne Duncan has laid out some new enforcement efforts by the federal government, to press school systems to improve and meet their civil rights obligations.

photo credit: Steve Snodgrass
According to a New York Times story:

”For us, this is very much about working to meet the president’s goal, that by 2020 we will regain our status in the world as the number one producer of college graduates,” Russlynn Ali, assistant secretary for civil rights in the Education Department, told The Associated Press. The department is expecting to conduct 38 compliance reviews around 40 different issues this year, she said.

In recent speeches Duncan has cited (quoted here) horrendous statistics like these, for a supposed “advanced democracy”:

A quarter of all students drop out before their graduation, and half of those come from 12 percent of the nation’s high schools. Those roughly 2,000 schools produce a majority of the dropouts among black and Latino students. Black students without disabilities are more than three times as likely to be expelled as white students, and those with disabilities more than twice as likely to be expelled or suspended — numbers which Duncan says testify to racial gaps that are ”hard to explain away by reference to the usual suspects.” Students from low-income families who graduate from high school scoring in the top testing quartile are no more likely to attend college than the lowest-scoring students from wealthy families.

This is 2010, right? Supposedly, this is to be more aggressive enforcement that under Bush:

”If the district has violated the civil rights laws and does not come into compliance with them, we could put conditions on existing grants,” Ali said.

But leading desegregation scholars like Gary Orfield have suggested that we need to wait and see if this is just more nice sounding rhetoric, or whether they mean business this time.

One educator on the Schools Matter blog (Dr. Jim Horn) had a much more critical take already on Duncan’s obviously meek efforts:

* If Duncan were serious about Civil Rights, he would end the use of testing policies that punish, humiliate, and separate the poor and the brown and the disabled from the rest of society….
* If Duncan were serious about Civil Rights, he would challenge the use of tracking inside schools to segregate, contain, and intellectually sterilize poor children who do poorly on tests that are now the only measure of what matters in a child’s school life….
* If Duncan were serious about Civil Rights, he would be advocating for a humane and challenging whole curriculum for poor children, rather than years of basic reading and math that leave the neediest unprepared for work that requires thinking and for college;…
* If Duncan were serious about Civil Rights, he would actively support the development of hospitable and humane school environments, rather than the academic and behavioral lockdowns that now make schools look like low or even medium security penal institutions.

And he adds yet other actions too. While these stated enforcement steps by the Obama administration are likely to be more and better than for the Bush administration, they do not come anywhere close to meeting this latter reasonable list of actions. Welcome to our fake democracy once again in action, as much educational and other data still clearly show a still systemically racist nation.

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White Saviors at the Academy Awards

March 8th, 2010



Andrés Tapia has an interesting blog post summarizing critical views of the Academy Awards that resonate with some reviews we have done here of prize-winning movies like Avatar and The Blind Side.
He begins:

For different reasons I was entertained, challenged, and/or inspired by Avatar, District 9, Precious, and The Blind Side, four of this year’s ten Oscar nominees. Smart script writing, convincing performances, off-the-chain special effects, first-class editing. And I simply loved the first two sci-fi flicks. . . . but it’s time we name the elephant in the room: what is it with this spate of Hollywood movies that require a member of the majority culture to save us poor people of color from ourselves or others every single time?

He adds:

So in Avatar, it takes one white male who goes rogue to save an entire civilization of classically depicted noble savages from the destructive forces of Western civilization (by the way, not unlike in Disney’s Pocahontas. …. there’s a point when one simply gets tired of always seeing stories of our being saved by white messiahs. It is not good for the majority culture who may be subliminally encouraged to keep taking on this white person’s burden and it’s not good for our communities of color where we are vulnerable to abrogating responsibility to be effective advocates for ourselves without having to have our redemption depend on the kindness of well meaning — and bigger than life — strangers.

It was an informative night Sunday, what with the white savior and other stereotyped movies doing well. Hollywood’s supposed “liberals” seem to be constitutionally incapable of doing a movie that is critical of mainstream white-racist institutions and realities.

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Campus Racism: The “Other” African American Students

March 7th, 2010

Mustafa Jumale, a Somali American student at the University of Minnesota, has been blogging on experiences there and in South Africa. Here is what he just sent me about some of his own experiences and insights about the experiences of other African-origin students:

The experiences of Black South African and African American students at historically white universities and predominantly white universities are both problematic and unique. South Africa has had a black democratic government since the fall of the Apartheid government. However, incidents at the University of the Orange Free State University, in which a few “white” South African students asked university housing employees to participate in a game. The students asked the employees to eat food, which contained urine. Moreover, these [white] students video recorded the game and entered it in a competition that was facilitated by students that were employed by the university as resident assistants; furthermore, these students won the best documentary for their video. In the United States, ever year we hear about white students participating in parities with racial themes in Black History Month, like the recent incident at University of California-San Diego.

After the elections of former President Nelson Mandela and President Barack Obama, media outlets enabled a discourse, in which these countries were referred to as “post-racial.” As a Somali American at a predominately white university in the Midwest, I understand the struggles of being black and Muslim. My senior honors thesis is entitled “Post-Racial” Societies: A comparative study of South Africa and the United States. I argue that “post-raciality” is in and within itself problematic. I used ethnographic methods and qualitative approaches to examine the “Black” South African experience and “African American” experience at historically white universities and predominantly white universities in South Africa and the United States. Moreover, I opened the discourse to students at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities and the University of the Western Cape by using a blog and facebook to generate discussion and to collect narratives of the experiences of students.

Here is an excerpt from an article from the Mshale (local African community) newspaper cited on his blog on some Somali Americans’ experiences in Minnesota:

“‘Minnesota nice’ at this university is covert racism,” Jumale said . . . just outside the university’s West Bank campus. Jumale’s sentiments stem from observation and interviews he conducted of least a dozen students for a research paper he wrote about the experiences of “Somali College Students at a Predominantly White Institution.” In his research, Jumale heard from a Somali honor student who majored in English Literature but was told by a professor on the first day of class that the course was “too advanced.” Then there was another student who told him he received a D in a term paper because, according to the professor, “the words in your essay are not words you would be able to understand.” But no grievance was more common than alleged harassment by the university’s police. Jumale heard complaints about police officers randomly searching Somali students’ supposedly looking for stolen property. Others complained about being asked to provide IDs while white students walked by uninterrupted. … It wasn’t until last October, when a police officer detained three Somali students for robbery, that Jumale and his fellow students realized that these were no trivial issues. …. Shafii Osman, a 19-year-old sophomore majoring in Biology, said he and two of his friends were walking from the university gym to a nearby MacDonald when an undercover police officer stopped them and asked for their IDs. . . . After looking at their IDs and searching their pockets, the officer allegedly said they “fit the description” of “East African males” who had just robbed Subway…. Osman said the officer ordered them into the car and took them to Subway.….. Despite the Subway employees’ failure to identify the men who had committed the crime a few minutes earlier, the officer allegedly asked Osman and his friends to pay for the sandwiches or risk criminal charges. They chose the latter. … With the help of an attorney, the three students were able to get their cases dismissed. But for one of Osman’s co-defendants, who did not want to be identified, the whole ordeal was so damaging that said he is still struggling to understand it. “It caused me a so much stress,” the friend said. “I was approaching exams with the possibility of being sent to jail.”

This is a common experience for native-born African American college students, as reported in research studies by social scientists on historically white campuses. And such academic and policing incidents are now becoming more commonplace for the “other African Americans” as they are sometimes called. They too are often viewed by many whites from the same white racial framing that has long negatively portrayed those African Americans whose ancestry goes back generations in the United States. BTW, Social scientists Yoku Shaw-Taylor and Steven Tuch have a very good edited book with chapters on various subgroups within this increasingly diverse group, titled The Other African Americans: Contemporary African and Caribbean Families in the United States.

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Whites Discussing Racial Matters: Some Debate

March 6th, 2010



One of our blogger-readers (Sara Libby) has blogged recently on the question, “When Exactly ARE White People Allowed to Talk About Race?” She critically assesses another blog post by Elie Mystal, who recently wrote too under the title of “White People: If You’re Not Bill Maher, Please Shut Up About Race.” Mystal has a long and interesting post on whites trying to speak on racial matters, and among his points he makes these:

Over a year into the first presidency by a black man in the history of the United States, we’ve learned one thing about race in America: Bill Maher is the only white man in the country that can make a quality racial joke without sounding racist. I don’t know how we got here, maybe white people who listen to Rush Limbaugh honestly don’t know the difference between edgy commentary and racism Limbaugh spews on a daily basis? Maybe conservative media outlets have convinced white people that talking about race respectfully means the terrorists win? . . . . [Maher is] seemingly the only one that can find the humor in having a black President (the same way he saw the humor in having a retarded President) without actually offending people with a basic sense of humor. In fact, he’s the only white person that can find the humor of having black people and white people live together (as they do here and no where else on Earth) without offending people.

He continues:

But after watching general white people (talking heads, journalists, celebrities, average people on the street) stumble through racial humor for a year, I now live in fear that some untalented white comedian (think: Dane Cook) will try to get on the trail Maher blazed and inadvertently start a full scale race war.

He then suggests that Maher might well take on the task of teaching the racist white activists, our “best educated” young whites (as we have blogged about several times recently) about racist joking and racist framing, as well as hate crimes:

If Bill Maher had a “ghetto-themed” cookout, it’d be funny. I don’t know how exactly, maybe Chris Rock would show up asking for “just one rib,” Maher would go as a predatory lender, Cornell West would come to drop some knowledge, and everybody would leave high on what we all assume is Maher’s top notch horticultural products? Somehow, he’d would make it work. . . . Clearly, we need to educate white people on the difference between funny and offensive. I understand that the line must seem blurred to many white people — especially the ones that are themselves racist but think they are not because they don’t wear pointy hats. It must be hard for some of them to balance the desire to hide their personal racial animus with their desire to sound lively and interesting at cocktail parties.

Libby comments on this post with her own questions, thus:

Clearly, we need to educate white people on the difference between funny and offensive. I understand that the line must seem blurred to many white people — especially the ones that are themselves racist but think they are not because they don’t wear pointy hats.. I hesitated to write this post, lest it be seen merely as an attempt to have people pat me on the back and tell me that no, Elie couldn’t possibly have been talking about me! . . . Your insights are precisely the kind of dialogue we need to see more of from aspiring white-girl pundits. . . . There is something to be said, though, of the fact that condescending to people who truly try to understand, dissect and move the ball forward on racial discourse without having dark skin themselves will only assure that the people who do speak out about race are the ones who don’t care how offensive they’re being.

She continues with a bit from her own background:

I came from a lily-white community (and state), and was raised by conservative parents who sometimes make vaguely racist statements; and yet I’ve tried to eek out a career discussing race in a thoughtful and measured way, without having much of a personal stake in it . . . , other than wanting to live in a world where people are judged individually and by “the content of their character,” as Dr. King has said. … I care more passionately and deeply about racism than probably every other issue facing our society right now. . . . Have I personally experienced racism before? Hell no – I’ve got blond hair and blue eyes. But how else will we ever get to a point where we can have an honest and intelligent dialogue on race if people like me don’t at least try to grapple with it? … if non-black people are constantly being told that they shouldn’t even attempt to broach the issue, since they’ll inevitably reveal how racist they are, then progress is impossible. . . . Two of the incidents he addressed in his “Bill Maher” post – John Mayer and the “Compton Cookout” party at UC San Diego – are ones I’ve also tackled on my blog, and roundly critiqued for their racial insensitivity. . . . Perhaps I’m getting worked up over nothing, because … Elie and I basically agree about the racial issues we both end up covering – and YES, there is an enormous amount of offensive, derogatory, hateful, shameful stuff out there being spewed by white people. If there weren’t, my writing career would quickly grind to a halt. And I can’t imagine how horrible it feels to experience even the most subtle types of racial discrimination. But I can attest that being told you can’t possibly conjure a valuable contribution to a public discourse on race just because you’re white doesn’t feel great, either.

I think Sara may be, as she suggests, overreacting a bit to Mystal’s post. Apart from his flamboyant title, Mystal is really pressing for whites to develop at least the racial sensitivity of Maher if they are going to presume to converse seriously on racial matters, and especially if they plan to make humorous comments. He is clearly not saying whites who are grappling with and critically assessing the racist hierarchy and white racial frame should keep quiet. In my view such whites certainly need to continue with serious searches for antiracist understandings and actions, and speak out especially to other whites, even as they make mistakes in that process. IMHO, speaking out as critically as one can on the dominant white racism is the obligation of all ethical human beings. Why do you think?

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Are the Racist Incidents on Campus Done by “Outliers”?

March 3rd, 2010

A yahoo news piece summarizes the many racist incidents in and around our “liberal” California campuses—and student reactions to them–this way:

At UC Irvine, about 250 people gathered for a “student solidarity speakout” to condemn the recent spate of racist incidents at UC San Diego that targeted black students and another incident last month at UC Davis, which targeted a Jewish student with a swastika carved on her door . . . . The protests came on the same day UC San Diego announced the discovery of a white pillowcase fashioned into a KKK-style hood — the third racist incident around the campus in as many weeks — and a day after UC Santa Cruz officials found an image of a noose scribbled on the inside of a bathroom door.

There was also a noose found on the San Diego campus, for which a student of color (not black) apologized anonymously in a letter in the campus newspaper. We have blogged on these in some detail recently. Other campuses have had their racist incidents in recent years too:

Although UCLA students said no racial incidents had occurred recently on their campus, in 2007, a fraternity held a “Tijuana Sunrise” party that mocked Mexican-Americans with stereotyped images, they said.

Sadly, the story and a scholar seem to want to view these incidents as the work of a few oddball racists and “outliers”:

The incidents are disturbing and most likely the work of “outliers” using offensive and outrageous behavior to gain notoriety, said Brian Levin, director of California State University’s Center for Study of Hate and Extremism in San Bernardino. He said surveys show young people are less prejudiced than ever, but “these things touch a nerve, and these folks know it.”

If this is a correct quote, then even experts like this fellow seem uninformed on the substantial field data showing that our white college students are not the paragons of white virtue such statements indicate. Do not they realize that in this social correctness era that many whites lie to survey researchers and pollsters? That they still operate frequently and in large numbers out of the white racial framing of Americans of color? That there are an estimated billion or so racist incidents participated in or observed just by white college students in their everyday lives each year?

The article goes on to say a few campuses are considering requiring an ethnic studies course, some mentoring, an African American Resource Center, and more funds for university diversity offices. Too little and too late, as the old cliche goes. And this very tepid and far from adequate reaction is indeed in the year 2010, some 50 years now after the civil rights revolution.

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Racist Attacks on President Obama: Early and Often

February 27th, 2010

A blogger over at DailyKos (blackwaterdog) has raised a question I have been thinking about for nearly a year now. How is President Obama being treated differently than other presidents and leading white politicians?

He first notes the differential treatment by the mass media in regard to President Obama’s intense and innovative meeting this week with Republicans:

With anyone else, CNN wouldn’t dare go to commercials every time the president speaks, like they did during that summit on Thursday. They wouldn’t dare counting how many minutes George Bush or Bill Clinton were talking. Chris Mathews wouldn’t dare making an issue out of Ronald Regan calling members of congress by their first name. . . .They fully cooperate with the Right-Wing smear machine when it comes to president Obama’s national security performance – even if almost every independent and military expert actually thinks that he’s a terrific Commander in Chief.


photo credit: Embajada de Estados Unidos en Bolivia

Not just the white supremacists and extreme rightists have constantly quibbled about or directly disrespected our President:

On Thursday, almost every Republican had no trouble interrupting him in the middle of a sentence. They looked like they’re going to vomit every time they had to say “Mr. president”

Much has been made in various media about Obama being “professorish” and/or “arrogant,” but clearly this is a stereotyped way of putting down his distinctive intelligence and grasp of the facts on many issues, including health care. Many folks accuse him too of being

elitist (because he uses big words that they don’t understand). He is weak on national security (because he actually thinks about the consequences). He divides the country (well, he did that the day he had the audacity to win the election). Worst of all, he actually thinks that he’s the president.

The racist imaging has obviously come from the far right wing and white supremacists, but some criticism is also coming from the white left, which can be seen in the left political blogs:

. . . there’s also some hidden and maybe subconscious and disturbing underline tone behind some of the things . . . throughout the Left blogosphere…. “He’s weak, he’s spineless, he’s got no balls, primary him in 2012.”

Adia and I predicted some of this attack in our Yes We Can? Book, but it is already clear that we need to add a chapter to that book on how quickly and severe these attacks have become, and not much more than a year into his pathbreaking Presidency. What do you make of the many attacks on President Obama so far?

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Is There a Need for Black History Month? or Year?

February 25th, 2010



We seem to forget the many civil rights organizations and efforts that still operate daily in this country, trying to bring change. One in New England is Basic Black, which was set up

in 1968 during the turmoil of the civil rights movement as a response to the demand for public television programs reflecting the concerns of African Americans. Now, forty years later, in the midst of another historical political shift, the mission of Basic Black remains strong.

On their useful website, Basic Black folks have many important discussions of racial issues today. One editorial recently is by Rev. Irene Monroe on debates, especially among conservatives and younger Americans of all politics stripes, about “Do We Still Need to Celebrate Black History Month? Her answer is a strong yes, and in the process she makes some important points:

February 1 began Black History Month, a national annual observance since 1926, honoring and celebrating the achievements of African-Americans. This February 1, the International Civil Rights Center and Museum (ICRCM) opened in Greensboro, North Carolina, honoring the courageous action of four African-American students. …. Fifty years ago on February 1, 1960, the now ICRCM was a Woolworth’s store and the site of the original sit-in . . . . And as a result of their civil disobedience, sit-ins sprung up not only in Greensboro but throughout the South.

She then quotes and dissects the problem of collective forgetting and societal erasure (Jane Hill’s term) that is so common in the U.S. today:

However, for a younger generation of African- Americans as well as whites, whose ballots helped elect this country’s first African-American president, celebrating Black History Month seems outdated.

Thanks of course to the aggressive socialization of almost everyone in elements of the old white racial frame, which naively or inaccurately insists white racism is now dead.

She also makes a key but rare point about how LGBTQ folks get left out of too much Black history, including in this month:

Within the African- American LGBTQ community, Black History Month has always come under criticism. … The absence of LGBTQ people of African descent in the month-long celebration is evidence of how race, gender and sexual politics of the dominant culture are reinscribed in black culture as well…. . And because of this heterosexist bias, the sheroes and heroes of LGBTQ people of African decent – like Pat Parker, Audre Lorde, Essex Hemphill, Joseph Beam, and Bayard Rustin – are mostly known and lauded within a subculture of black life.

We need a new era of collective remembrance on all these issues. How about 12 Black history months every year?

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Domestic Terrorism: Racial, Gender, and Class Angles (UPDATED)

February 20th, 2010

As you probably know by now, a white software engineer crashed his plane into an office building in Austin and killed himself and at least one other person. David Neiwert has a probing article at Crooks-and-Liars,” with a video from Fox News that moves strongly away from calling this an “act of terrorism.” They describe the act as like someone who wildly attacks with a gun at their workplace. The Obama administration’s press secretary and the Department of Homeland Security are also saying it probably was not an act of terrorism. A newsperson at Fox concluded:

Our Homeland Security contacts telling us, this does not appear to be terrorism in any way that that word is conventionally understood. We understand from officials that this is a sole, isolated act.

Neiwert notes that

Well, this is true only if the conventional understanding of the word “terrorism” has now been narrowed down to mean only international terrorism and to preclude domestic terrorism altogether. Since when, after all, is attempting to blow up a federal office as a protest against federal policies NOT an act of domestic terrorism? You know, Timothy McVeigh used a “dangerous instrument” to kill 168 people in Oklahoma City. He too was angry at the federal government, and was converted to the belief that acts of violence was the only means possible to prevent the government from overwhelming our freedom and replacing it with tyranny.

He was also not brown or black. That seems to have something to do with the way these events are reported and described as “not terrorism” by media and government officials. Indeed, I see no one at the mainstream media outlets analyzing that the likely suicide attacker was white, or even much analysis of his note below.

The very long letter from the apparent suicide attacker was left by him on the web, and reads in part:

If you’re reading this, you’re no doubt asking yourself, “Why did this have to happen?” …. Sadly, starting at early ages we in this country have been brainwashed to believe that, in return for our dedication and service, our government stands for justice for all. ..While very few working people would say they haven’t had their fair share of taxes (as can I), in my lifetime I can say with a great degree of certainty that there has never been a politician cast a vote on any matter with the likes of me or my interests in mind. . . . Yet, it mercilessly “holds accountable” its victims, claiming that they’re responsible for fully complying with laws not even the experts understand.

A major thrust of his suicide note is an attack on taxation, and this is what the media has played up. This is similar to the anti-government motivation for the kind of domestic terrorism engaged in my Timothy McVeigh in Oklahoma City. Very few in the mainstream media have so far explored his strong critique of the business world:

Why is it that a handful of thugs and plunderers can commit unthinkable atrocities (and in the case of the GM executives, for scores of years) and when it’s time for their gravy train to crash under the weight of their gluttony and overwhelming stupidity, the force of the full federal government has no difficulty coming to their aid within days if not hours? Yet at the same time, the joke we call the American medical system, including the drug and insurance companies, are murdering tens of thousands of people a year and stealing from the corpses and victims they cripple, and this country’s leaders don’t see this as important as bailing out a few of their vile, rich cronies.

He continues with a discussion of his efforts as an engineer and rails against people losing their pensions to corrupt management executives, unions, and officials. After much economic difficulty, he moved to Austin, which gets a bad review:

So I moved, only to find out that this is a place with a highly inflated sense of self-importance and where damn little real engineering work is done. I’ve never experienced such a hard time finding work.

He then had more economic troubles, and blames the IRS for this problems:

I remember reading about the stock market crash before the “great” depression and how there were wealthy bankers and businessmen jumping out of windows when they realized they screwed up and lost everything. Isn’t it ironic how far we’ve come in 60 years in this country that they now know how to fix that little economic problem; they just steal from the middle class (who doesn’t have any say in it, elections are a joke) to cover their asses and it’s “business-as-usual”. Now when the wealthy fuck up, the poor get to die for the mistakes. . . . I know I’m hardly the first one to decide I have had all I can stand. It has always been a myth that people have stopped dying for their freedom in this country, and it isn’t limited to the blacks, and poor immigrants. . . .I choose to not keep looking over my shoulder at “big brother” while he strips my carcass, I choose not to ignore what is going on all around me, I choose not to pretend that business as usual won’t continue; I have just had enough. . . . Sadly, though I spent my entire life trying to believe it wasn’t so, but violence not only is the answer, it is the /only/ answer. . . . Well, Mr. Big Brother IRS man, let’s try something different; take my pound of flesh and sleep well. *The communist creed: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.* *The capitalist creed: From each according to his gullibility, to each according to his greed.* Joe Stack (1956-2010)

We get here a close look at the mind of a suicide attacker, and probably should read it closely. His rationale for violence is carefully presented. This event and its reporting have important racial and class angles.

There is also a major gender violence angle here. MSNBC reported some domestic dispute between the attacker and his wife before the incident, and he appears to have set to light his house on fire, and the fire department had to rescue his wife and daughter. Gender gets downplayed often in these cases. This man first terrorized his wife and daughter, then engaged in an act of domestic terrorism against the government. His wife and daughter are now homeless.

White anger and violence directed at the government is not usually reported as terrorism. White, heterosexual, Christian men infrequently get called out as such and generalizations developed on the basis of these demographics. If these recent incidents by white men had been committed by Muslim men or others of color it is quite likely those demographics would be foregrounded. @GuerrillaMama has put it eloquently (via Twitter):

Suppose two men committed separate acts of extremist murder in the United States within a month. Suppose the gunmen attacked a church and a national landmark, motivated by politics and religious prejudice, targeting a nationally controversial figure and innocent civilians. Suppose there was a history of attacks by similarly motivated men in America, ranging from individual shootings and bombings to an act of spectacular violence that destroyed a federal office building. Suppose two Muslim men had done this. Is there even a question that we would be using a particular term to describe this behavior? Might reporters and news anchors be terming these horrible acts, say, “terrorism”?

Still, Matt Yglesias cautions about an overreaction to this event:

But instead of complaining about the hypocrisy involved in not trying to whip people into a fit of terror and madness about this incident, I think it makes more sense to congratulate everyone on handling this in a calm and sensible manner. . . . Simply put, the odds of “death by disgruntled anti-tax activist flying an airplane into your office” are extremely small and it’s extremely difficult to think of cost-effective and efficacious methods of ensuring that this never happens again. Off the top of my head, this looks to me like a demonstration of the desirability of better mental health services in the United States, but that’s something that I would think was true one way or the other.

In my view, this is a good time for much careful reflection and action about the underlying, stressful, oppressive class, racial, gender conditions of this society. For example, the society’s structural conditions, mentioned in the suicide note, that sometimes play a role in driving people of any background to such extreme violence are also rarely examined in the mainstream media. One can and should examine these contextual conditions of suicide attackers closely without excusing such violence. They often tell us something about our societies. Clearly, the economic depression we are now in is likely part of his story. So, it seems to me, is the violent rhetoric of many in the “tea bag” movement and on white supremacist websites. This extremely violent talk and discussion probably makes violence seem “normal” to people like this suicide attacker. Why is there no mainstream media discussion of the broader racial and class and gender implications of this story, and the biased ways it is being handled?

UPDATE: MEMBER OFCONGRESS EMPATHIZES WITH WHITE DOMESTIC TERRORIST (VIA TPM)

Rep. Steve King (R-IA) told a crowd at CPAC on Saturday that he could “empathize” with the suicide bomber who last week attacked an IRS office in Austin, and encouraged his listeners to “implode” other IRS offices, according to a witness. King’s comments weren’t recorded, but a staffer for Media Matters, who heard the comments, provided TPMmuckraker with an account. The staffer, who requested anonymity because she’s not a communications specialist, said that King, an extreme right-winger with a reputation for eyebrow-raising rhetoric, appeared as a surprise guest speaker on an immigration panel at the conservative conference.

We should note too that the only person this white domestic terrorist killed was a black veteran of Vietnam.

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