WHO?:

The Good White People (Robert Jensen, May 4, 2004, AlterNet)

I stepped onto the speakers' platform at the Virginia Festival of Books in Charlottesville with Newsday editor Les Payne to discuss our chapters in his book When Race Becomes Real. Bernestine Singley, the other panelist, had edited the book.

As I walked to my seat, I was well aware of Payne's impressive record. I had read his work, and I know he is a more experienced journalist than I am. He's won more prizes and written more important books than I. Payne has traveled more widely and reported on more complex subjects. He is older than me, and has done more in his life than I have. I also have heard Payne speak before, and know that he is a more commanding and more forceful speaker than I am.

So, as I sat down at my seat, I did what came naturally; I felt superior to Les Payne. If it seems odd that I would feel superior to someone I knew to be more talented and accomplished than I am, then here is another relevant fact: Les Payne is African American, and I am white.

I didn't recognize that feeling of superiority as I sat down, or as I made my remarks on the panel. It wasn't until Payne started reading from a chapter in his book and explaining how he came to write his essays that my feeling became so painfully clear to me.

Payne talked about how, as a teenager born in the segregated South who attended high school in the North, he had struggled to overcome the internalized sense of inferiority which grew from the environment in which he had been raised. He talked with a quiet passion and power, about how deep that sense of inherent inferiority can appear in African Americans.

At some point, I made the obvious connection. Part of the reason that the struggle Payne described is so hard for African Americans is because white behavior is a constant expression of that feeling of superiority, expressed in a fashion both subtle and overt. My mind raced immediately to that feeling of superiority I felt as we had taken our seats. I had assumed, despite all that I knew about Les Payne, his record, and his speaking ability, that I would be the highlight of the panel. Why? It might be because I'm an egotistical white boy. Maybe I'm a white boy with delusions of grandeur. The former is almost certainly true. The latter may be an exaggeration. But whatever my own personal weaknesses are, one factor is obvious: I am white and Payne is African American, and that was the basis of my feeling.

Ask the next 285 million Americans you meet if they've ever heard of either of these clowns, never mind their "important books" and how many affirmative answers might you get? Two? Maybe four, if they're married?

MORE:
This format would appear to be a speciality of Mr. Jensen--who I Googled lest it turn out I was the only one who'd never heard of him. Chreck out this faux mea culpa, I Helped Kill a Palestinian Today (Robert Jensen, April 9, 2002, CounterPunch)

I helped kill a Palestinian today.

If you pay taxes to the U.S. government, so did you.

He also causes violence against women, You are what you eat

Before we get to the debates about how to define pornography, or whether pornography and sexual violence are connected, or how the First Amendment should apply to pornography, let's stop to ponder something more basic:

What does the existence of a multi-billion-dollar pornography industry say about us, about men?

More specifically, what does "Blow Bang #4" say?

"Blow Bang #4" was in the "mainstream" section of a local adult video store. For a research project on the content of contemporary mass-marketed pornography, I asked the folks who work there to help me pick out typical videos rented by the typical customer. One of the 15 tapes I left with was "Blow Bang #4."

Looks like 9-11 is his fault too, "Doing something: making peace and seeking justice"

There is a difficult truth about the United States that we must come to terms with if we are to understand why we were targeted for this cruel attack: For more than three decades, the United States has been the biggest obstacle to peace in the Middle East, and until we reverse that position we will be the target of the frustration and anger of many people there.
 
Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza since 1967 is at the heart of the conflict in the Middle East, and that occupation has been possible because of support the United States -- through Republican and Democratic administrations. We call ourselves the architects of the "peace process," but in truth we have for decades blocked the international consensus for peace, which has called for Israel to give up the occupation and demanded basic rights for the Palestinian people.
 
Since 1991, when the Bush administration made sure that a U.S.-led war would be the only response to the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, the resentment of the United States among the people of the Middle East has only deepened. Our willingness to use massive and indiscriminate violence in that war, and our eagerness to establish what has become a permanent military presence in the region, has made us few friends.
 
Yes, we need to do something -- but something to shift our policy in the Middle East from rule-by-force to the quest for justice. Nonviolence is not simply about refusing to make war; it also is about creating justice in the world so that war is not necessary.

It's a powerful delusion, the arrogant belief that you are personally in control of all that happens in the world.

Posted by Orrin Judd at May 6, 2004 8:39 PM