According to Chris Matthews, host of MSNBC’s Hardball, “regular folks” = “white folks”. Chris Matthews isn’t even trying to be covert anymore. He’s just outright saying that whiteness is “regular”. Unbelievable. The stench of white privilege is emanating from the video. Whiteness is “regular”. Whiteness is “normal“. That’s what he’s saying.

So Chris, if white folks are regular, what are folks of color? I can’t believe that you are allowed to sit behind a desk and broadcast this racist garbage and call it news.

From Media Matters:

On the July 7 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews teased an upcoming segment by saying: “They’re the working-class white voters Hillary Clinton won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama now win over the regular folks, white folks, against John McCain? We’ll ask the strategists.” On the June 30 edition of Hardball, Matthews similarly teased a segment by asserting: “Up next: They’re the working-class white voters Hillary won and Barack didn’t. Can Obama win over the regular folks against John McCain?”

Tim Wise has written a new essay that critiques the racist rhetoric that’s being furiously spread around the interwebs in the wake of flooding in Iowa - “Adding Insult to Injury: Race, Disaster and the Calculus of Comparative Suffering.” It’s a deeper analysis that is very similar in context to my post on “Comparing Iowa to New Orleans.”

Disasters bring out the best and worst in people.

On the one hand, millions of folks respond to the suffering of their fellow human beings with compassion, concern, and even significant financial assistance when needed. Be it a hurricane, an earthquake, tornadoes or the recent massive flooding in the Midwestern United States, the hearts, minds, and often wallets of large numbers of the nation’s people are with those in need.

And on the other hand, there’s Rush Limbaugh, who has decided to use the flooding in Iowa not to demonstrate compassion, but as an opportunity to make derogatory statements about poor black folks: specifically those caught by the flooding in New Orleans after Katrina in 2005.

This week, as folks in Iowa, Indiana and parts of Illinois have watched flood waters rise ever higher, Limbaugh took to the air to contrast these supposedly good and decent people who have joined forces to help each other, with the presumably evil, lazy and violent folks of New Orleans, who we are told, did nothing but foment criminality and wait for the government to save them during flooding there in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

In 1942, xenophobic U.S. officials enacted policies that resulted in the internment of over 100,000 Japanese American citizens. 42 Japanese American students at Oregon State University were forced to leave the university and sent to internment camps. Most did not ever return to OSU. On Sunday, June 15th, OSU awarded honorary degrees to every Japanese American student who was unable to complete their degree.

via the OSU Admissions Blog

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I been reading a lot of quotes on the interwebs that are saying that Iowa is handling flooding better than New Orleans dealt with Katrina. A lot of the comments (some are more overt than others) imply that white folks in Iowa (of course these comments completely marginalize Iowans of color) are doing a better job of steadfastly standing up to floodwaters while folks of color in New Orleans were looting and relying on handouts. Is this rhetoric racist? Of course it is. It’s comparing two situations that are logically impossible to compare. A single urban area vs. acres of farmland dotted with small to medium sized towns does not present a landscape that is comparable. The rhetorically racist comparisons of flooded Iowa and Katrina-impacted New Orleans reminds me of this Tim Wise video that illustrates how racism has been used to facilitate division amongst working class white folks and working class folks of color.

via Michael Faris

Sergeant Dave Hendrie said: “I think the thing that was shocking to me and gave me a better understanding when people talk about white privilege, it’s offensive to me, it feels like a judgment term to me but having watched this specifically as it relates to housing practice and how that works, we talk about white suburbia and here it is, it was a policy that these were the only people allowed to move out there, was whites. So I have a better understanding of white privilege. If I was a G.I and I’d come out here I’d have been able to get a loan for a home, wheras that same advantage would not have been given to Chuck. And to see that as part of the government instituted process of giving loans was disturbing to me.”

Yes you did just hear a Portland Police Officer changing his perspective of white privilege. There’s plenty more discussion, all of it equally fascinating, and you get to find out who Chuck is, after the jump.

via Blogtown, PDX

Canada will apologize for a policy that forced native children into boarding schools in an effort over a century ago to “civilize” and assimilate the nation’s indigenous population into mainstream culture and religion, the Los Angeles Times recently reported.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Stephen Harper will offer an expiation on behalf of the schools and will ask more than 150,000 students and their descendants to consider forgiving the country.

Sixty-year old Thomas Louttit was forced to attend one of the dozens of residential schools for eight years. He told the Times that children were assigned numbers for an identity, sexually abused and terrorized, thus leaving many scarred as adults. Many of Louttit’s friends committed suicide or battled alcohol abuse.

The federal government has already begun payouts from its $1.9 billion compensation fund for natives, the Times reported. Yet for many, monetary compensation is not enough. Dr. Roland Chrisjohn, director of the Native Studies program at St. Thomas University in Saskatchewan, said these schools and their affiliated churches must confront the truth.

“The important thing is that they own up to what they did, admit that it is unconscionable, and it was genocide,” Chrisjohn said.

The last residential school was shut down 12 years ago, decades after some of the first schools were built. In 1996, a federal commission determined that the schools were detrimental to the native population and outlined a program of healing and redress.

via Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

Faris responded to several of the comments on his letter to white LGBT siblings at OSU. Scroll down to number 27 for some Farisian awesomeness. I’ve excerpted a few choice sentences…

Below, I will address the claims made in the above comments.

Before I do this, though, I want to make something clear about what I wrote in this column. In the above comments I read that I called people racists or that I resorted to personal attacks. This column did no such thing. I wrote, “I believe that for a white person to host a party themed “Cowboys and Indians” is racist.” No where in this sentence does it state that I believe that someone who holds this party is racist. I wrote that the ACTION of holding this party is racist. If we break down the above sentence, the subject is “to host a party,” which is an action.

This is a subtle distinction, but one that needs to be made. I don’t believe that calling someone racist does any good, as we are all affected by institutional racism and prone to racist acts when we do not think critically about our actions.

Nor was this meant to be a personal attack: I was not attacking the personhood of who hosted this party or the people who attended. I was attacking and critiquing an ACTION. It is imperative, I believe, to keep this distinction in mind.

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Michael Faris, a friend, fellow Iowan, hero, and gym partner of mine has written an amazing letter - “An Open Letter to My White LGBT Siblings.” The letter was initially published in the Oregon State University student-run newspaper - The Daily Barometer. The comments on the newspaper’s website to Michael’s letter have ranged from the bizarre (saying that Faris is a homophobe is like saying that I hate Star Wars), the ridiculous (one commenter seemed to think that because Michael’s letter was well-written that he must have used a thesaurus…umm Michael’s formal training is in writing, of course his letter is at a high level of articulate awesomeness), and the banal (the trolls brought along their dusty suitcases of unoriginality for most of their comments).

Here’s a brief snippet of the letter. Feel free to travel the info pipes to Michael’s blog for the full read…

And your party, asking folks to dress up like caricatures of Native Americans, is perpetuating the historical representations of racist images created and perpetuated by white society.

I am sure that you would say your party is ironic, that you knew these representations were racist, but you did it out of absurdity. I would reply that you are refusing to deal with your white privilege.

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Once again, my site has been mentioned on a white supremacist internet forum… I think if I ever start a rock band, it will have to be called “Leftwing Fever Swamp.”

By the way, feel free to call me “Eric the granola-munching geekboy” or the “DDOTY”.

…especially this guy - a granola-muncher named Eric in Corvallis, Oregon, who should definitely get the Diversity Dork of the Year Award. (Be sure to visit Eric’s leftwing fever swamp as the little geekboy loves to analyze his web traffic and hates it when Str0mfront links to his site. You know those sci-fi movies where a portal opens somewhere and scary monsters come through to spread fear and terror? That’s how Eric views an SF link to his diversity love-in. Maybe I’ll post his non-pub number so that everyone can wish him a happy belated birthday.

I received an email regarding a survey last month from Banana Republic stating that “The Banana Republic is looking for a select group of shoppers to become Insiders!” I clicked on the survey link. I was immediately struck by the fact that the wording of the survey epitomized white privilege. Caucasian is the first choice on the race/ethnicity section. Why is it that so many surveys place “Caucasian” or “White” as the first choice for race? The options on this survey are not in alphabetical order and where in the heck is Native American / Alaska Native? Why can we only select one response? Perhaps the folks at Banana Republic didn’t realize that race and ethnicity are not the same thing and that multiracial people do exist!

I guess it’s clear who Banana Republic considers a “select group of shoppers.” Unfortunately, it’s not a huge surprise given the fact that the Banana Republic’s website features 99.9% white models. The only people of color that I could find on the Banana Republic website were on the BR’s parent company, Gap Inc., “Social Responsibility” page in reference to employees and factory conditions. Yuck!

Could you please tell us which of the following best describes you?
Please select one response.
• Caucasian - this is usually easier for White people to check, especially since it’s the first choice.
• African American
• Hispanic or Latino - yes, the Banana Republic does not know that race and ethnicity are not the same.
• Asian - sorry, the Banana Republic does not recognize “Asian American” as an identity.
• Other - as in the Banana Republic does not recognize your identity as being important enough to recognize.