Let's Talk About the Radicalization of Young White Males Online
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White Privilege, White Fragility, White House
MAY 12, 2017 / JOHN PAVLOVITZ
Let’s be honest here: our President is not a well man.
To most objective observers this isn’t really up for debate anymore. His frenetic impulsiveness, his propensity toward violent outbursts, his elementary school vocabulary, his nonsensical Twitter rants, his allergic reaction to the truth, his public bullying of judges and FBI staff. If Donald Trump were operating in any other arena—business, education, local government, he’d be called unfit for his position and either fired, arrested, or declared mentally unsound.
But despite mounting evidence of collusion with Russia, and despite a steady stream of irrational Executive Orders, unceremonious firings, and staggering abuses of power—here he sits.
But that’s not the problem we have here in America.
The problem we have, is that it’s becoming more and more clear that none of this matters to a large percentage of white people, who are determined to make this President their noble Moses; the one who will lead them out of the imagined captivity they’d been in for the past 8 years, and on to the Promised Land of their past greatness.
“You’ll suffer now, just like we suffered under Obama!” they say to people of color, or quietly believe now. Whether the former was true or not, is neither here nor there. The fact of the matter is that they believe it—and this is why they are silent now: they are finally feeling spoken for.
This is the seductive snake oil Donald Trump sold them as he barnstormed the nation last year, appealing to every bit of frustration and fear and perceived oppression felt by white folks who always had a problem with a black President, who believed themselves persecuted for their faith, and who’d been convinced that they were actually the marginalized ones in the nation made to order for them.
It’s why this President is the Great White Hope they’ve been waiting for, because he has a similar gift: to have the deck stacked fully in his favor, to have been the recipient of every advantage the system offers, to be the beneficiary of every shortcut imaginable—and to still see himself as the victim, to still feel attacked. It is this paradoxical notion of the entitled underdog, that Trump has exploited, with a great deal of help from a White Church who’ve owned religion in America for decades—and yet still imagine themselves as persecuted while holding the bully pulpit. They’ve been cruel Goliath to the world, but see little David in the mirror.
And this is the greatest irony of this moment; that to so many white people in America, Donald Trump somehow represents a change from the status quo, a victory for the downtrodden, an advocate for the little guy, (though he is in reality, none of those things.) He is not at all forthem, but they seem defiant in not admitting this, intentionally ignoring what their eyes see. Despite the fact that his policies regarding healthcare, education, taxes, and the environment will leave them more vulnerable than ever—they are applauding him for saving them.
For the past few months I, like others, have been pleading for disappointed Trump voters to stand with the tens of million of us who comprise a multiethnic, nonpartisan, multigenerational, interfaith resistance to this Administration. They have largely been invisible. And though some of them have withdrawn from the conversation out of embarrassment over their choice in November, or grown fatigued at being called bigots and racists and homophobes—the lion’s share of the President’s Evangelical, white base is perfectly fine with the world burning. To them, the actual details of Trump’s tenure; any election corruption or unconstitutional political maneuvers, any gross incompetence, or any of his actual words or actions—are all rather inconsequential. He is a symbol, and his substance is of little concern.
He makes them feel like they are getting something back that they’ve lost (regardless of the fact that they’ve never lost it), he makes them feel like they count again (even though they’ve always counted.) For them, Donald Trump is a big, white middle finger to the world they’ve grown to believe has oppressed them—which is of course, the height of privilege; to see any movement toward justice as a personal attack. As beneficiaries of every perk and advantage, the past 8 year’s tipping toward balance has felt like a threat, and though these days are a rapid regression of equality and diversity in America, they’re willfully oblivious to it all. It all feels good.
And honestly I’m not sure there is anything anyone can do or say to change their minds. Facts, data, and objective information are no match for their chosen narrative of an endangered minority, fighting to emancipate themselves from the persecution they’ve been trapped in.
White lives matter. This is what Donald Trump means to them. The fact that white live have always mattered the most in this country is a minor detail. That they have been the power holders since the birth of this nation unimportant.
And this is why we so far to go, to reach the Promised Land that Martin Luther King Jr. said he could see off in the distance—one where all men and women, regardless of the color of their skin or their faith tradition, have equal freedom here.
It’s still a long way off.
@Shook @Raymond Burrr @Red Shield @bdizzle @satam55 @houston911 @Sagat @Trajan @Sukairain @YouMadd?
Free White & 21
AAGang
Like Tariq says: "It's all fun and games and trolling until one of these SWS get's in position of power"
Not saying this guy is a SWS but his situation isn't unique. I suspect we'll start seeing more of these guys exposed for their online activity.
@Raymond Burrr I don't think Richard Spencer is a real mover & shaker. No way someone who is real mover & shaker would be saying this stuff in the mainstream media.
Free White & 21
AAGang
Yea you're right, he's not a real mover and shaker... yet. He's setting the tone for what hopefully will be the white narrative in the next 20 years. He definitely has political and media connections and he's had them for AT LEAST a decade.
Don't sleep on this guy.
UM student arrested in fatal stabbing of Bowie State student in College Park
UM student arrested in fatal stabbing of Bowie State student in College Park
Scott Dance and Jessica Anderson
A University of Maryland student has been arrested in the fatal stabbing of a Bowie State University student early Saturday amid end-of-the-school-year revelry.
The victim was waiting for an Uber ride with two Maryland students about 3 a.m. when a man witnesses described as intoxicated and incoherent attacked him, university police Sgt. Rosanne Hoaas said.
The stabbing occurred on Regents Drive in front of the Montgomery Hall dormitory, near a busy university shuttle stop and a gate that leads to the bars and restaurants on busy U.S. 1, police said.
Officers called to the scene arrested a male student who witnesses identified as the assailant and recovered a folding knife, police said. The victim was taken to a hospital, where he died, police said.
The attack was captured on surveillance video. No charges had been filed as of 9:30 p.m.
"Right now, what we know is this is an unprovoked incident," she said.
Police did not release the name of the suspect. Bowie State officials said the name of the victim was being withheld until Sunday at the request of his family.
The attack rattled students, university officials and parents who have descended on both campuses for graduation festivities.
"I'm shocked," said Rosey Ugo Edeh of Toronto, who was in town to see her daughter graduate from the University of Maryland. "This is a weekend of pure bliss and celebration for seniors."
Edeh was gathering bouquets of flowers and "Congrats, Grad!" balloons outside Memorial Chapel, just up the street from the crime scene. She said her daughter learned of the homicide during a family brunch Saturday morning.
As a parent, she called the tragedy "concerning and sad," and not just because her daughter had spent the night celebrating along a stretch of bars the victim and suspect also might have visited.
"It makes me wonder about the stress and anxiety," she said.
The presidents of both Maryland and Bowie State said moments of silence would be observed at commencement ceremonies.
"Words cannot express my deep anguish over this horrific tragedy," University of Maryland President Wallace D. Loh said.
Both leaders offered condolences to the family of the victim and said counseling would be available for students.
"When tragedies happen, they can either bring communities together or tear them apart," Bowie State President Mickey L. Burnim said. "I sincerely hope that in the days to come, the Bowie State University community can find a way to come together, lift each other up, and remember the one who we've lost."
Gov. Larry Hogan said the state is working closely with the university as it investigates the stabbing.
"Our students deserve to feel safe, and violence on our campuses will not be tolerated," Hogan said in a statement.
The University of Maryland, College Park, the state's flagship university, is about 12 miles from Bowie State.
There were no signs of the crime along Regents Drive on Saturday afternoon, as students in black caps and gowns walked with their families between ceremonies for the individual departments and schools and the shops and restaurants of downtown College Park.
The university-wide commencement ceremony is scheduled for 1 p.m. Sunday at Xfinity Center. The arena is scheduled to host the Bowie State commencement Tuesday.
Clauton Kum, a junior who lives in Montgomery Hall, said students at Maryland are accustomed to receiving crime alert emails — but to learn of a homicide on campus was jarring. Kum was out on the town Friday night, and said the area was still lively with revelers at the time of the attack.
"You get a few robberies, but a stabbing?" Kum said as he stretched in the dorm courtyard after a workout. "This is a heavily populated area."
University of Maryland police are leading the investigation, Hoaas said. They asked anyone with information about the stabbing to contact the department at 301-405-3555.
According to FBI data, a homicide has not occurred on campus grounds in at least a decade.
It has been years since students have been involved in a homicide elsewhere in College Park.
In 2013, a student shot two of his roommates, killing one, before committing suicide at their off-campus house. In 2005, a student died in a fire that was later ruled to be arson, set at an off-campus house by a classmate. A student was stabbed to death at an off-campus party in 2003.
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The Census and Diversity (The next census may make the country "seem" whiter) — 2 perspectives
The real-talk original
:knowledge:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/opinion/sunday/the-census-and-right-wing-hysteria.html
The Census and Right-Wing Hysteria
By HERBERT J. GANSMAY 11, 2017
Oliver Munday
Several years ago, the Census Bureau began to predict that the United States would become a majority-minority nation by the 2040s — that African- and Asian-Americans, as well as Latinos, would outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Last year the census underlined its prediction by announcing that non-Hispanic white babies under the age of 1 were already in the minority.
These numbers have become a handy data point for whites fearful that they are being threatened and overwhelmed by a growing tide of darker-skinned people. In this way, the census may have unintentionally increased white racism, thereby justifying the longstanding Republican strategy of turning itself into a whites-first party. White fears probably even helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
Nonetheless, the “minority-majority” forecast, as it is commonly interpreted, is likely to be proven wrong. Not only could whites remain a majority well past midcentury, but they will retain political, economic and cultural control of the country long after that.
Simply put, the demographers have not taken into account how the perception of race is likely to change in the coming years. For example, whites are already seeingthe descendants of some Asian and Latino immigrants as being similar to them. Consequently, whites treat them as white. This “whitening” process will only increase in the future.
The census prediction is based on at least five mistakes, all of them correctable. In an article last year in The American Prospect, the sociologist Richard Alba showed how the first three mistakes underestimated the likely growth of the population that views itself as white.
Mistake No. 1 The Office of Management and Budget requires the census to count people of white-Latino, white-Asian and white-black ancestry as nonwhite and, in its minority-majority prediction, the census counts all of these populations as minorities. In reality, however, a number of these so-called mixed-race people, especially from the first two populations, identify themselves as white.
Mistake No. 2 The census seems to have failed to anticipate the likelihood that the number of mixed-race people who see themselves as white will grow much more in the coming decades, primarily as a result of increasing Latino-white and Asian-white intermarriages. By the 2040s, when the children of these unions have become adults, a significant number will marry whites themselves and become parents — thereby further increasing the population seen as white and thus the white majority.
Mistake No. 3 The census forgot American history — specifically the long history of the whitening of populations previously labeled nonwhite. In the 18th century, when the first Swedish and German immigrants arrived here, Benjamin Franklin and others complained that their skin color was endangering Anglo-Saxon racial purity. A generation or two later, their descendants, now Americanized, looked perfectly Anglo-Saxon.
In the 19th century, the Irish, particularly poor ones, were described as black or swarthy, as were the equally poor Eastern and Southern European immigrants who followed. But by the 1960s, their grandchildren were called white ethnics.
The same whitening is now taking place among the descendants of Asian and light-skinned Latinos, particularly those already in the middle class. But native-born African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and African immigrants are still excluded.
Mistake No. 4 This could be called the identity-identification paradox. The census asks people how they identify themselves racially, but a meaningful prediction requires knowing how they are identified by others.
The question is whom whites will still identify as nonwhite by the 2040s. Most likely, ever-larger number of whites will see people of mixed races and the children of intermarriages as white, increasing the white population.
Mistake No. 5 The census has lumped African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans together, projected their numbers to the 2040s and decided that the sum should be labeled a majority.
But the three populations differ in many ways. Moreover, they compete against one another for jobs and other scarce resources, including political power. They may discriminate against one another when they want or need to, and can do so.
Each racial group is diverse in many ways, to begin with by initial national origin. Chinese immigrants are culturally different from Japanese ones, Mexicans are unlike Peruvians and West Indian blacks do not share the same experience as African-Americans, even though both were once enslaved.
Each is also internally stratified. Rich members keep their distance from the rest, and descendants of earlier immigrants sometimes exploit the later arrivals. They may even discriminate against one another by region of origin and shades of skin color.
Because of all this, even beyond the 2040s, the populations are unlikely to act together as a unified group, a cohesive voting bloc or any kind of cultural majority.
In all fairness, the Census Bureau’s majority-minority forecast reports have always been brief and strictly limited to the numbers. They never considered possible changes in the perception of race in the next two decades. Perhaps the demographers never even imagined that their findings could be interpreted to demonstrate that nonwhites would “overwhelm” whites.
Had that idea come up, they might have suggested that non-Hispanic whites’ becoming a minority said nothing about whether they would still control the country socially, economically, politically and almost every other way. After all, states like California and Texas are already majority-minority, and others, including Georgia, Maryland and Nevada, will soon join them. Whites remain dominant in all of them.
The census cannot say this, but whites should fear instead that many of them are increasingly suffering some of the same economic and political pains as nonwhites. All are victims of an economy that has computerized many jobs and sent others overseas. All are victims of a political system that is ever more dominated by business and a donor class that funds many election campaigns.
However, most whites do not see their common victimhood and too many blame blacks, Latinos and now Middle Eastern and other recent immigrants for their troubles.
The Census Bureau’s majority-minority prediction could be interpreted as contributing to this blaming practice. The bureau will need to address this in case the forecast becomes a weapon in the country’s political battles, impairing its credibility.
The census could start by pointing out that rising intermarriage, whitening and other cultural changes could affect and even invalidate its prediction for the 2040s.
Or it could go further and abandon that forecast and the entire majority-minority idea. The country will be better off if the Census Bureau does so as soon as possible.
....and the white surepmacist response: :whitejordanpls:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/the-census-and-diversity.html
The Census and Diversity
MAY 22, 2017
Oliver Munday
To the Editor:
Herbert J. Gans’s claim that the Census Bureau is responsible for abetting right-wing hysteria in America (Sunday Review, May 14) is remarkable in several respects. It not only counters the basic facts of the country’s rising diversity, but it also gives license to the Trump administration to insert its own agenda in reporting race statistics.
Can the census really present data to make America look whiter in the eyes of Trump supporters?:smarttrump: Mr. Gans believes that it can because those identifying as “mixed race” should be counted as whites. But recent census research suggests that this will add only an additional 5 percent to the country’s 62 percent white population, and that assumes that these people would even want to be so identified.
He predicts that children of white-other interracial marriages will claim to be white. But that is unlikely with today’s younger generation, which at 51 percent white is comfortable living in a multiethnic society, surveys show. :GoatHolcomb:
The Census Bureau is providing an accurate portrait of a racially changing country from the “bottom up” of the age structure. To be sure, this is creating a cultural generation gap, as older whites find this demographic change troubling.:whitejordanpls:
Rather than camouflaging this information, our leaders need to make them understand how investments in young minorities will ensure our future economic and demographic sustainability.
The message should be that in the 21st century being an American doesn’t mean that you have to be white.
WILLIAM H. FREY, WASHINGTON
The writer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.”
The real-talk original
:knowledge:https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/11/opinion/sunday/the-census-and-right-wing-hysteria.html
The Census and Right-Wing Hysteria
By HERBERT J. GANSMAY 11, 2017
Oliver Munday
Several years ago, the Census Bureau began to predict that the United States would become a majority-minority nation by the 2040s — that African- and Asian-Americans, as well as Latinos, would outnumber non-Hispanic whites. Last year the census underlined its prediction by announcing that non-Hispanic white babies under the age of 1 were already in the minority.
These numbers have become a handy data point for whites fearful that they are being threatened and overwhelmed by a growing tide of darker-skinned people. In this way, the census may have unintentionally increased white racism, thereby justifying the longstanding Republican strategy of turning itself into a whites-first party. White fears probably even helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election.
Nonetheless, the “minority-majority” forecast, as it is commonly interpreted, is likely to be proven wrong. Not only could whites remain a majority well past midcentury, but they will retain political, economic and cultural control of the country long after that.
Simply put, the demographers have not taken into account how the perception of race is likely to change in the coming years. For example, whites are already seeingthe descendants of some Asian and Latino immigrants as being similar to them. Consequently, whites treat them as white. This “whitening” process will only increase in the future.
The census prediction is based on at least five mistakes, all of them correctable. In an article last year in The American Prospect, the sociologist Richard Alba showed how the first three mistakes underestimated the likely growth of the population that views itself as white.
Mistake No. 1 The Office of Management and Budget requires the census to count people of white-Latino, white-Asian and white-black ancestry as nonwhite and, in its minority-majority prediction, the census counts all of these populations as minorities. In reality, however, a number of these so-called mixed-race people, especially from the first two populations, identify themselves as white.
Mistake No. 2 The census seems to have failed to anticipate the likelihood that the number of mixed-race people who see themselves as white will grow much more in the coming decades, primarily as a result of increasing Latino-white and Asian-white intermarriages. By the 2040s, when the children of these unions have become adults, a significant number will marry whites themselves and become parents — thereby further increasing the population seen as white and thus the white majority.
Mistake No. 3 The census forgot American history — specifically the long history of the whitening of populations previously labeled nonwhite. In the 18th century, when the first Swedish and German immigrants arrived here, Benjamin Franklin and others complained that their skin color was endangering Anglo-Saxon racial purity. A generation or two later, their descendants, now Americanized, looked perfectly Anglo-Saxon.
In the 19th century, the Irish, particularly poor ones, were described as black or swarthy, as were the equally poor Eastern and Southern European immigrants who followed. But by the 1960s, their grandchildren were called white ethnics.
The same whitening is now taking place among the descendants of Asian and light-skinned Latinos, particularly those already in the middle class. But native-born African-Americans, Afro-Caribbeans and African immigrants are still excluded.
Mistake No. 4 This could be called the identity-identification paradox. The census asks people how they identify themselves racially, but a meaningful prediction requires knowing how they are identified by others.
The question is whom whites will still identify as nonwhite by the 2040s. Most likely, ever-larger number of whites will see people of mixed races and the children of intermarriages as white, increasing the white population.
Mistake No. 5 The census has lumped African-Americans, Latinos and Asian-Americans together, projected their numbers to the 2040s and decided that the sum should be labeled a majority.
But the three populations differ in many ways. Moreover, they compete against one another for jobs and other scarce resources, including political power. They may discriminate against one another when they want or need to, and can do so.
Each racial group is diverse in many ways, to begin with by initial national origin. Chinese immigrants are culturally different from Japanese ones, Mexicans are unlike Peruvians and West Indian blacks do not share the same experience as African-Americans, even though both were once enslaved.
Each is also internally stratified. Rich members keep their distance from the rest, and descendants of earlier immigrants sometimes exploit the later arrivals. They may even discriminate against one another by region of origin and shades of skin color.
Because of all this, even beyond the 2040s, the populations are unlikely to act together as a unified group, a cohesive voting bloc or any kind of cultural majority.
In all fairness, the Census Bureau’s majority-minority forecast reports have always been brief and strictly limited to the numbers. They never considered possible changes in the perception of race in the next two decades. Perhaps the demographers never even imagined that their findings could be interpreted to demonstrate that nonwhites would “overwhelm” whites.
Had that idea come up, they might have suggested that non-Hispanic whites’ becoming a minority said nothing about whether they would still control the country socially, economically, politically and almost every other way. After all, states like California and Texas are already majority-minority, and others, including Georgia, Maryland and Nevada, will soon join them. Whites remain dominant in all of them.
The census cannot say this, but whites should fear instead that many of them are increasingly suffering some of the same economic and political pains as nonwhites. All are victims of an economy that has computerized many jobs and sent others overseas. All are victims of a political system that is ever more dominated by business and a donor class that funds many election campaigns.
However, most whites do not see their common victimhood and too many blame blacks, Latinos and now Middle Eastern and other recent immigrants for their troubles.
The Census Bureau’s majority-minority prediction could be interpreted as contributing to this blaming practice. The bureau will need to address this in case the forecast becomes a weapon in the country’s political battles, impairing its credibility.
The census could start by pointing out that rising intermarriage, whitening and other cultural changes could affect and even invalidate its prediction for the 2040s.
Or it could go further and abandon that forecast and the entire majority-minority idea. The country will be better off if the Census Bureau does so as soon as possible.
....and the white surepmacist response: :whitejordanpls:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/22/opinion/the-census-and-diversity.html
The Census and Diversity
MAY 22, 2017
Oliver Munday
To the Editor:
Herbert J. Gans’s claim that the Census Bureau is responsible for abetting right-wing hysteria in America (Sunday Review, May 14) is remarkable in several respects. It not only counters the basic facts of the country’s rising diversity, but it also gives license to the Trump administration to insert its own agenda in reporting race statistics.
Can the census really present data to make America look whiter in the eyes of Trump supporters?:smarttrump: Mr. Gans believes that it can because those identifying as “mixed race” should be counted as whites. But recent census research suggests that this will add only an additional 5 percent to the country’s 62 percent white population, and that assumes that these people would even want to be so identified.
He predicts that children of white-other interracial marriages will claim to be white. But that is unlikely with today’s younger generation, which at 51 percent white is comfortable living in a multiethnic society, surveys show. :GoatHolcomb:
The Census Bureau is providing an accurate portrait of a racially changing country from the “bottom up” of the age structure. To be sure, this is creating a cultural generation gap, as older whites find this demographic change troubling.:whitejordanpls:
Rather than camouflaging this information, our leaders need to make them understand how investments in young minorities will ensure our future economic and demographic sustainability.
The message should be that in the 21st century being an American doesn’t mean that you have to be white.
WILLIAM H. FREY, WASHINGTON
The writer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, is the author of “Diversity Explosion: How New Racial Demographics Are Remaking America.”