[Vision2020] Rick Perry's Newest Problem

[Dave]

I thought that all the creeks, bays, etc. have been renamed (at least in 
Idaho). Due mostly to the work of a young lady from up north.  There was 
an excellent story on it on Yin Radio on KRFP.

Dave


On 10/02/2011 01:45 PM, Rosemary Huskey wrote:
>
> This must read article is a reminder not just of Rick Perry and his 
> ilk, or our local defender of Southern Slavery As It Was, but also our 
> "I am not a racist"  knuckleheaded neighbors who still find the term 
> sq**w an appropriate name for a mountain or a creek right here in our 
> very own private Idaho.
>
> Rose Huskey
>
> Posted by Chauncey DeVega 
> <http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/author/chaunceydevega/> at 11:49 am
> October 2, 2011
>
> http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/10/02/rick-perrys-newest-problem-his-fond-memories-of-niggerhead-and-growing-up-in-a-sundown-town/
>
>
>   Rick Perry's Newest Problem: His Fond Memories of "Niggerhead" and
>   Growing Up in a Sundown Town
>
> Posted by Chauncey DeVega 
> <http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/author/chaunceydevega/> on @ 11:49 am
>
> Article printed from speakeasy: http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy
>
> URL to article: 
> http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2011/10/02/rick-perrys-newest-problem-his-fond-memories-of-niggerhead-and-growing-up-in-a-sundown-town/
>
> It was a mostly white world. In 1950, the census counted about 900 
> black residents out of a population of about 13,000 in Haskell County, 
> numbers that have declined steadily. Most blacks worked as maids or 
> field hands and lived in an across-the-tracks neighborhood in the city 
> of Haskell, the county seat, about 20 minutes from Paint Creek.
>
> Throckmorton County, where the hunting camp is located, was for years 
> considered a virtual no-go zone for blacks because of old stories 
> about the lynching of a black man there, locals said. The 1950 Census 
> listed one black resident in Throckmorton County out of a population 
> of about 3,600. In 1960, there were four; in 1970, two; in 1980, none. 
> The 2010 Census shows 11 black residents.
>
> Mae Lou Yeldell, who is black and has lived in Haskell County for 70 
> years, recalled a gas station refusing to sell her father fuel when he 
> drove the family through Throckmorton in the 1950s. She said it was 
> not uncommon in the 1950s and '60s for whites to greet blacks with, 
> "Morning, nigger!"
>
> "I heard that so much it's like a broken record," said Yeldell, who 
> had never heard of the hunting spot by the river.
>
> And you wonder why black folks had to use /The Green Book/ 
> <http://www.nhregister.com/articles/2010/01/15/news/a1-yugreenbook.txt> as 
> a guide for safety while touring this country?
>
> Rick Perry's family retreat was/is named "Niggerhead." 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rick-perry-familys-hunting-camp-still-known-to-many-by-old-racially-charged-name/2011/10/01/gIQAOhY5DL_story.html> 
> /The Washington Post's/ cover story is a distraction of course from 
> more important issues such as a failing economy, Perry's questionable 
> record on jobs and the environment in Texas, and a far-Right leaning 
> Republican presidential field that would combine Ayn Rand with the 
> Christian Taliban. But a distraction can still be instructive and 
> productive.
>
> For the Left and other critics, Rick Perry's Niggerhead hunting camp 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/therootdc/post/the-power-and-pain-of-the-n-word/2011/10/02/gIQAjOeVFL_blog.html> 
> is more proof that he is a racist and a bigot. For the Right, this 
> story will be greeted as "gotcha politics" 
> <http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/right-turn/post/perrys-perpetually-playing-defense/2011/03/29/gIQAik0bFL_blog.html> 
> and more bias from the "mainstream media." Lockstep, the Right-wing 
> media will revert to form and argue that "all of this race stuff" is 
> playing the "race card" against white people. Who cares anyway since 
> Perry's dad was a Democrat and he originally owned Niggerhead anyway? 
> Predictably, there will be more spin from Conservatives and a 
> recurring blindness to political history, i.e. Southern Democrats aka 
> "Dixiecrats" are now the base of the Tea Party GOP.
>
> And of course, black Republicans such as Herman Cain will be trotted 
> out to dance on the stage while they answer questions about Rick Perry 
> and racism.
>
> All in all, theatrics that are par for the course of what counts as 
> reasonable discourse in the 24 hour opinion driven news cycle.
>
> I would suggest that Rick Perry's Niggerhead family retreat is 
> important in so far as formative childhood and adult experiences 
> impact political attitudes and beliefs. Rick Perry is from the Jim and 
> Jane Crow South and has advocated for secession. He also panders to 
> the Tea Party with all of their "take my America" pleadings and is 
> part of a cultural movement that possesses an almost deranged hatred 
> for the country's first black President. Racism and Conservatism 
> overlap in America; the Conservative political imagination yearns for 
> a return to the "good old days" and is blinded by a myopic White 
> nostalgia for the past.
>
> In all, why should anyone be surprised that there is a Niggerhead 
> skeleton in Rick Perry's closet? Moreover, I would bet that there are 
> many Niggerhead skeletons in many white folks' closets in this country.
>
> We must also be cautious and not paint with too broad a brush, or 
> suggest that Rick Perry is somehow unique in this regard. He is not 
> alone in a willful denial of white supremacy and the Slaveocracy/Jim 
> and Jane Crow/Confederacy's hold on American popular imagination even 
> into the 21st century.
>
> The white racist Southern Redemptionist fantasy 
> <http://www.amazon.com/Making-Whiteness-Culture-Segregation-1890-1940/dp/0679776206> 
> and lie that is /Gone with the Wind/ 
> <http://books.google.com/books?id=sh4gWmGfBm0C&pg=PA271&lpg=PA271&dq=southern+redemption+racism&source=bl&ots=WgY1yhHMGP&sig=FeqYbDSCby4vlEye_Lf-K1099qw&hl=en&ei=LaaITq-sDsmFsgL98aiMDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=4&ved=0CDkQ6AEwAw#v=onepage&q&f=false> 
> is still beloved by millions of people (all those happy black folks 
> <http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/ht/41.4/briley.html>; 
> white people in big houses and fancy clothes; what good fun!). Lady 
> Antebellum is an acclaimed musical group (where are the Auschwitz 
> singers? Or the Trail of Tears emo band?). A significant percentage 
> <http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2011/04/12/civil-war-still-divides-americans/> 
> of Americans do not believe that the Civil War was fought over slavery 
> <http://www.alternet.org/teaparty/150569/what_shocking_new_polls_on_republican_attitudes_toward_slavery,_interracial_marriage_say_about_the_modern_gop/> 
> and the rights of White people to hold Black people in perpetual 
> bondage. The Whiteness of history is glaring. Rick Perry, as 
> demonstrated by his love for Niggerhead, is just one of many Americans 
> who are transfixed by it.
>
> Nevertheless, Rick Perry's Niggerhead moment is teachable history. For 
> that reason it is important.
>
> Rick Perry grew up in a sundown town. As James Loewen exhaustively and 
> masterfully documents 
> <http://sundown.afro.illinois.edu/sundowntowns.php>, there were 
> thousands of these communities across the country where blacks (and in 
> some cases Jews, Mexicans and other non-whites) were not allowed to 
> live, journey through, or be present in after dark. These towns were 
> often created by racial violence and the wholesale ethnic cleansing of 
> non-whites through murder, forced exile, rape, banishment 
> <http://www.banishedthefilm.com/>, theft, and violence.
>
> When we wonder why some neighborhoods look the way that they do, why 
> there are no black folks or other people of color living there, or 
> stand vexed by the intergenerational wealth gap in the United States, 
> part of the answer lies in American Apartheid. Sundown towns were a 
> key part of the Racial State's apparatus and how it structured the day 
> to day lives of all people.
>
> Racial terrorism was a tool of economic exploitation. Because many in 
> White America are loathe to acknowledge the power of structures and 
> institutions as they cling to the lie that is the myth of meritocracy, 
> Niggerhead is a reminder of lived history in the present. Yesterday 
> wasn't even yesterday; it created the present terms of political, 
> cultural, economic, and social engagement.
>
> While some Americans have a limited knowledge of the relationship 
> between housing segregation and the maintenance of the colorline, 
> fewer know about sundown towns and America's history of ethnic 
> cleansing. This history hides in plain sight. It lives on in debates 
> over the racialized names of rivers, towns, mountains, and other 
> public places. It is present when real estate agents refuse to show 
> people of color homes in certain communities. It is the ether and 
> lifeblood of whitopia 
> <http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation_id=annotation_279181&v=WFWS5fk6MD8&src_vid=voFMec-M8VY&feature=iv>.
>
> Ignorance of race and racism's historic role in structuring life 
> chances, and basic geographies such as where one lived, married, 
> worked, and traveled, is especially common among the post-Civil Rights 
> generation. This dynamic is especially true for Millennials who would 
> be aghast at the reality of white supremacy as the norm for American 
> history where their imagined multicultural moment is indeed an 
> aberration--a very recent development--and one that works through 
> conservative colorblindness as opposed to a deep and radical 
> engagement with human difference, identity, justice.
>
> Rick Perry's Niggerhead moment will be a short-lived blip on the news 
> radar. Niggerhead will confirm what his detractors already believe 
> about Rick Perry. Niggerhead will encourage his supporters to circle 
> the wagons and double down their support because their "culture" is 
> under assault. Unfortunately, Niggerhead will be a missed opportunity. 
> This could be a teachable moment where White Americans could choose to 
> look in the mirror and see the collective ugliness looking back at 
> them. Whiteness, for most people in America, and indeed the world, was 
> the face of terror. It was ugly and not beautiful.
>
> Folks of all colors should know their shared history; instead it is 
> easier to look away, make up fun fictions, and tell yourself easy lies 
> and platitudes about "post-racial" America.
>
> Remember folks, there is a little Niggerhead in all of us...for some 
> like Rick Perry, a good deal more than others.
>
> Editor and founder of the blog We Are Respectable Negroes which has 
> been featured by the NY Times, the Utne Reader, and The Atlantic 
> Monthly. Writing under a pseudonym, Chauncey DeVega's essays on race, 
> popular culture, and politics have appeared in various books, as well 
> as on such sites as the Washington Post's The Root and Popmatters.
>
>
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