Tweet

Tim Wise

8 Mar, 14 tweets, 3 min read

1/ If you bash cancel culture & scream about free speech but support states/school districts banning material they deem influenced by Critical Race Theory (or really anything that says racism has been a central feature of U.S. history--an inarguable truth btw), you're a fraud...

2/ A committee in NH just passed out a bill to do this. One proponent of the bill cited a lecture of mine being used in some classes as the reason why. What was the offending material that hurt this snowflake's feelings so much? Let's see. He cites three points in the lecture...

3/ First, he was mad bc I said, "Rich white people telling working-class white people that their enemies are Black and Brown...That's the whole history of America." Well, it's true. That's been a constant since the colonies...

4/ Indeed, the creation of the concept of the white race itself was for this purpose. To convince piss-poor peasants of European descent that they were one big team, vis-a-vis Africans and indigenous people. Who did that, and why? Rich folks, to stifle class rebellion...

5/ It's not really an arguable point. But to these people seeking to ban CRT--which, btw, that argument isn't really even part of--it's "racist" because it casts aspersions on the actions of rich white people. Mmm, k...

Let's see what else bothered this guy...

6/ Next, he was mad at me saying:

"Let's be clear. Our ancestors from Europe were the losers of their societies."

Now if that was the entirety of what I said, that would be weird. But the point I was making is that white folks typically mis-remember our immigration story...

7/ Contrasted with today's brown skinned migrants we fashion a false narrative of freedom-loving people who all spoke English, had clean fingernails and were highly skilled. But we weren't. The folks like that--the winners in Europe--didn't leave. Winners never leave...

8/ Those who migrate from one place to another are the ones who were losing back home. And as I said in the speech, there's no shame in that. Not for our white ancestors & not for brown folk today. I was arguing that we should see ourselves in the other, and the other in us...

9/ How is that racist? It isn't. The guy complaining is an illiterate hack. Finally, he was mad because I said:

"Liberty and freedom? You think we believed in that? What history book have you been reading? We didn't believe in that."

Um...

10/ This is inarguably true. The founders did not believe in liberty and freedom, unless one thinks its enough to believe in it for propertied white men. The first law they passed after the Constitution was ratified was the Naturalization Act of 1790. What did it say?...

11/ That only free whites could be citizens. This, in addition to the enshrinement of human bondage in that document (via provisions for the return of runaway enslaved persons) ought to be sufficient to make the case. But to this guy (and the NH legislative committee)...

12/ Saying that is "un-American" and so they say seek to ban it. These people want to ban any teaching that explores the role of racism in this country. It's not even CRT they're after (which they couldn't define if their lives depended on it). It's inconvenient truths...

13/ This is the biggest assault on free speech in the country right now. But please conservatives tell me more about how oppressive it is that the Seuss estate decided on their own to pull certain books they didn't think reflected the legacy of their namesake properly...

note...in this this tweet "that document" refers to the Constitution itself not the Naturalization Act...sorry for the confusion

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More from @timjacobwise

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

6 Mar

1/ If you need proof that racism harms white folk too, just consider the trajectory of COVID deaths and what it tells us...

2/ In April of 2020 when whites had only been 30% of C19 deaths, and headlines announced disproportionate Black death rates, the administration and the right demanded opening everything back up, ending lockdowns, etc...

3/ Coincidence? Of course not. If the data had shown disproportionate white death (or wealthy death, or younger folks dying or healthier folks), no way are people clamoring for "getting back to normal" or showing up at rallies with guns and camo, screaming about 'tyranny...'

Read 7 tweets

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

20 Feb

There is a stunning lack of analytical sophistication among much of left Twitter, which causes their loudest voices to grossly overstate support for progressive/left policies. As someone who supports those policies it pains me to say this but it's true...

A THREAD

2/ These folks excitedly point to survey data showing broad support for M4A, for instance, or other left priorities & say "see, the people are with us!" and thus, the reason we don't get those things passed is "big Pharma money" or other corporate money buys off the lawmakers...

3/ This is incredibly simplistic on multiple levels. First, NO lawmakers would actually vote against what the people in THEIR district supported if they believed those people were actually going to vote, money be damned. They wouldn't commit political suicide for PAC money FFS...

Read 32 tweets

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

18 Jan

That any conservatives would today praise MLK is evidence of the failure of our school system to teach him accurately, or the utter venality of those conservatives. Not ONE movement conservative supported King while he was alive. They detested him...

(a brief thread)

2/ The National Review — the main organ of the movement — condemned the civil rights movement he led and actually claimed “crazed Negroes” might have bombed the 16th St Baptist church in B’ham themselves, just to cast aspersions on sweet little segregationist whites...

3/ No conservatives or right wingers marched with him. And please, don’t say “but Charlton Heston!” That was actually when Heston was a liberal, so...

Read 7 tweets

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

16 Jan

1/ I’m not one for ‘told ya so’s but in 1989 when David Duke won the state House seat in Louisiana, some of us said this was an inflection point in American politics. This wasn’t just the logical result of Reaganesque racial dog whistling. It was something different (a thread)...

2/ It wasn’t even George Wallace, strictly speaking, though it was closer to that than Reagan. It was the blatant introduction of racist appeals under the guise of mainstream conservatism, and w/a polish and media-savvy Wallace lacked, as had most previous white supremacists...

3/ Duke knew how to use media. He cut 30 minute infomercials in his Senate run in 1990 — unheard of at the time — to slowly lay out his politics of racial resentment, knowing it would find a home w/white folks angered by previous GOP scapegoating of welfare, etc..

Read 19 tweets

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

7 Jan

1/ A few thoughts re: the increasingly accepted (and somewhat obvious) wisdom that "if the people who stormed the capitol had been Black they'd have been beaten or shot." This is true, so far as it goes, but too simple, in a way that MINIMIZES the power of whiteness in America...

2/ Don't misunderstand, I'm glad whenever white folks begin to see this kind of thing, and we all start somewhere. But there are at least 3 levels at which leaving it with the above argument minimizes the issue of systemic white supremacy (not just privilege)...

3/ First, to say "if they'd been black they'd have been beaten or shot," ignores a key element of white supremacy: the mentality of white entitlement, which led them to think they could do what they did w/o consequence in the first place...

Read 21 tweets

Tim Wise

@timjacobwise

7 Jan

It's not the MAGA mob's whiteness alone that explains why they weren't shot, beaten or arrested en masse. It's bc their rage seeks to reinforce the SYSTEM of whiteness, which they see threatened by Trump's defeat. If they were leftists or antiracists, they'd have been brutalized.

The bigger issue is the way law enforcement responds to people based on whether they are fighting to upend traditional hierarchy and injustice or reinforce and maintain it. If it's the latter, no problem. The former, all bets are off.

This means, typically, that Black and brown folks -- more likely to be protesting existing hierarchy and systems of domination -- will get the brunt of the abuse not merely for being Black and brown but for fighting white supremacy...

Read 4 tweets

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