The GOP and Toxic Straight White Masculinity

Credit: Jeff Malet, maletphoto.com/AP/Bill Haber/Salon)

There is a reason that the GOP base and GOP candidates typically get the majority of the white heterosexual male vote:  The party and its candidates pander to the irrational fears and demand for privilege and special rights that far too many straight white males expect and demand.  Adding to the mix is the right wing media and blogosphere that similarly play on the fears of straight white males.  Their targets?  Anyone who is "other" in their minds which includes virtually everyone who isn't a straight white male.  Gays, of course are definitely in the "other" category since we do not conform to the straight male stereotype of masculinity nor do we in general slavishly adhere to the Christofascist agenda that always puts straight white males at the top of the social pecking order.  A somewhat tongue in cheek piece in Salon looks at the toxicity of straight white male masculinity and the harm it causes to others.  Here are excerpts:

White America is suffering from a type of cancer. It is hurting you; it is killing your children; it is damaging families; it hurls shrapnel in many directions, maiming and otherwise bringing an end to the lives of those people who are unfortunate enough to be in its blast radius. If you want the truth, this is it: toxic white masculinity, and the backward right-wing politics which nurture and protect it, are hurting millions of you every year.

Toxic white masculinity is a fear of the world changing to the disadvantage of white men, and where what too many white men take as natural rights are actually going to be exposed as unfair advantages, advantages which were gifted by a lottery of genetics and fortune of birth, as opposed to earned merit.

Toxic white masculinity defaults to violence as a means of maintaining social and political control. It clings to guns as a symbol of “real” male identity. It fears women as equals; it lashes out at non-whites who are somehow “stealing” white men’s jobs and power. Toxic white masculinity sees “liberals,” “progressives,” “social justice,” and “feminism” as enemies — out of a fear that “white masculinity” will somehow be made obsolete or extinct. The dream worlds and paranoid fantasies of angry white men are distractions that look to some type of Other as the preeminent threat to America’s safety and security. The reality is of course, very different.

In reality, right-wing domestic terrorists and mass shooters are the number one threat to America’s safety and security since September 11, 2001.

White men are approximately 31 percent of the United States population. And yet, white men are nearly 63 percent of those people who commit mass shootings. Such behavior, among any other group, would be considered pathological and a public health crisis.

Toxic white masculinity is a complex problem. And you cannot fix it unless you also confront how toxic white masculinity is nurtured and encouraged by your news media and political representatives.

Fox News is your mouthpiece: 92 percent of its prime time viewing audience is white. Fox is the most popular cable news network in the United States. Millions of people watch it on a daily basis. Fox News is part of a propaganda machine that consists of the Internet, radio, and social media. This has created an alternate reality for many White Americans where down is up and up is down, so to speak. Researchers have shown that the right-wing media actually makes its public less knowledgeable about empirical reality and current events than those people who do not watch or listen to it.

The white identity politics, grievance mongering, conspiracies, paranoid thinking, eliminationist rhetoric about liberals and progressives, hostility to women, rage against immigrants, anxiety about those who are not “Christian”, and mainstreaming of white supremacy and white racial resentment, are the fuel for toxic white masculinity. The right-wing media gins up and encourages such sentiments because it is dependent on them for viewers and ad revenue.

The Republican Party, meanwhile, is America’s most prominent white identity organization. Since the end of the civil rights movement, the modern GOP has fused together conservatism and racism as its name brand.

In many ways — the fetishistic embrace of guns, hostility to women’s rights, Islamophobia, symbolic and overt racism against black people — the policies and talking points of the contemporary Republican Party are toxic white masculinity as a campaign platform.  

[H]ostility and anxiety towards people who may have a different skin color than you is fool’s gold. White America’s leaders, and the plutocrats to whom they owe their allegiance, have been using that fake money to hustle and manipulate you for centuries. 

 

NOM's Strategy of Racial Division Keeps Getting Pounded

Thankfully, the firestorm over the despicable and cynical tactics of the National Organization for marriage continue to get media coverage - other than in the knuckle dragger loving Virginian Pilot, of course - and, better yet, the coverage is spilling into the black media. The lily white Christianist organizations have long regarded blacks and black pastors as would be trained circus dogs to do the bidding of their white puppeteers. One can only hope that some in the black community will finally open their eyes and cease being the tools of the same social groups that supported segregation and Trayvon Martin's shooter in Florida. An op-ed in BET News looks at NOM's disgusting race baiting agenda. Here are excerpts:

Ever since African-Americans were (wrongly) blamed for the success of California’s Proposition 8, a ban on same-sex marriage that was this year overturned, African-Americans of all colors have lamented the divide between America’s Black community and its gay community.

To be sure, nobody is saying that there aren’t serious issues of homophobia that need to be handled within some of the Black neighborhoods and churches in the United States. But it turns out at least some of the homophobia is being stoked by insidious bigots.

According to secret internal memos from the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), one of America’s leading conservative groups working against same-sex marriage, NOM has made a concerted effort to drive a wedge between African-Americans and gays. The memos were released due to a legal challenge of Maine’s financial disclosure laws. NOM was forced to provide some transparency to court officials, who promptly released the damning documents.

Despite the fact that his organization has now been shown to be a group of bigots whose methods include manipulating minorities into disliking each other, NOM’s president, Brian Brown, says he stands by his tactics. “Gay marriage is not a civil right, and we will continue to point this out in written materials such as those released in Maine," he said in a statement. "We proudly bring together people of different races, creeds and colors to fight for our most fundamental institution: marriage.”

The ugly divisiveness distributed by hateful people like Brown is a bit shocking, of course, especially in its brazenness. But it’s nothing new. It’s a centuries-old strategy to hurt what could otherwise be powerful forces — divide and conquer. We’d be wise to not let NOM divide us.

What makes Brown's whining responses to the scandal even more farcical is that he's now claiming that NOM is the victim of the mean gay bullies at HRC and other gay rights organizations. And of course, he is using lines that equate to "some of my best friends are black" even though NOM's leadership is all lily white. People in the black community need to stop falling for this disingenuous bullshit. Brown and those like him are the true face of anti-gay white Christians and everyone needs to wake up to this reality. Here's a clip of Julian Bond's thoughts on NOM and its tactics:

Census DATA Reveals Decreasing White Population in 15 States

New census data will no doubt further energize the Christian Right and its white supremacist allies - that's assuming, of course that the two groups are not one and the same - and cause even more hysteria that "white civilization" is under attack. For a group that likes to put minority rights up to a public vote, the irony is that some day they may find themselves in the minority and have helped set the stage for their own downfall. What's interesting is that the declining white percentages of the population are not confined to boarder states with growing Hispanic populations, but include parts of the Northeast, Mid-West and the South. The KKK loving Tony Perkins and his cohorts at Family Research Council must be hyperventilating indeed! Here are some excerpts from a Washington Post story:

Non-Hispanic whites are a dwindling share of the U.S. population, with their numbers dropping in the Northeast and Midwest and growing only modestly in the South and West, the Census Bureau said Thursday. Whites declined in 15 states, almost all in the industrial and farming states from Massachusetts to Pennsylvania, and from Kansas to Ohio. They also declined in California and three Southern states, including Maryland.

A Census Bureau analysis of the 2010 count showed that the number of non-Hispanic whites rose over the decade from 194.5 million to 197 million, but the 1.2 percent growth rate fell far short of the national increase of 9.7 percent. Non-Hispanic whites are now 64 percent of the population, down from 69 percent a decade ago. The census also reported that the black population grew by 12 percent.

The number of Hispanics and Asians is soaring, the number of blacks is growing slowly and whites are almost at a standstill.

Hispanics are an ethnic group of people who can be of any race. Most Hispanics identified themselves as white. The number of whites who indicated for the census that they are Hispanic increased by 56 percent.

Whites who are not Hispanic are getting older on average, and have low birthrates that, when coupled with the high birthrates of Hispanics and Asians, make whites a smaller share of the population with every census count.

Some states experienced outsize growth in the white population. The number rose by 10 percent or more in Arizona, Hawaii, Idaho, Nevada, North Carolina, South Carolina, Utah and Wyoming. The District, which the census treats as a state for statistical purposes, had a 32 percent leap in whites.

Every state saw its multiple-race population jump by at least 8 percent, and some of the largest increases were in the South. The number of multiracial people more than doubled in the Carolinas and came close to doubling in Georgia and Delaware. Nine of the 10 states with the biggest increases were Southern states.

Yep, not good news for the Christianists and white supremacy crowd. For those of us who don't judge others based upon the color of their skin or ethnic background, it's no big deal.

ACLU Issues Travel Warnings to Arizona

I continue to maintain that bigotry and intolerance is not good for tourism and/or attracting progressive businesses. Now, in what can only be a tourism disaster, Arizona is the subject of travel warnings by 28 affiliates of the ACLU who are warning of potential unwarranted arrests under Arizona's new anti-Hispanic immigration law. The affiliates are also offering information that can be downloaded and printed which advises those who may be improperly arrested for "looking" like illegals as to how to protect their rights. Perhaps to make up for lost tourism the Arizona tourism board can start marketing to the Klan and other white supremacist groups since the new immigration law - which is already being challenged in five court suits - is clearly racist in its intent. Here are some highlights from the Washington Post:
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PHOENIX -- The nation's top civil liberties group on Wednesday issued travel alerts for Arizona, saying the state's new law cracking down on illegal immigrants could lead to racial profiling and warrantless arrests.
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American Civil Liberties Union affiliates in Arizona, New Mexico and 26 other states put out the warnings in advance of the Fourth of July weekend. The Arizona chapter has received reports that law enforcement officers are already targeting some people even though the law doesn't take effect until July 29, its executive director said.
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The Arizona law requires police, while enforcing other laws, to question a person's immigration status if officers have a reasonable suspicion that the person is in the country illegally. It also makes it a state crime for legal immigrants to not carry their immigration documents, . . .
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[T]he ACLU still believes that officers will inappropriately target minorities. "We have a long history of racial profiling in this state, and this is basically going to really exacerbate that problem," said Alessandra Soler Meetze, executive director of the ACLU of Arizona. The ACLU's warnings were accompanied by a "bust card" that citizens or non-citizens can print out or download to their mobile phone instructing them about their rights during encounters with police.
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Besides ACLU affiliates in Arizona and New Mexico, chapters in Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Kansas, Missouri, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Montana, Nevada, Ohio, Oregon, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming issued the alerts.
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Welcome to Amerika!

The End of White America?

The End of White America? That's the title of an new article in the Atlantic Monthly the substance of which will no doubt get the Kool-Aid drinking elements of the GOP and Christian Right all a twitter and hyperventilating since they go absolutely crazy over the idea that America may cease to be a white majority nation. These are after all the same folks - or their descendants - who used the Bible to justify segregation and bans on interracial marriage. The only segment of the population that they like less than non-whites and mixed race individuals are LGBT citizens. They do not judge people by their character or abilities but rather only by their skin color, religious affiliation and sexual orientation. In my view, they are what's wrong with America and U.S. politics. And I expect that we will see even more intolerance arise from these self-styled "real Americans" as they seek to marginalize non-whites, mixed race, and gay Americans, all of whom are examples of the dreaded "other." Here are some story highlights:

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Whether you describe it as the dawning of a post-racial age or just the end of white America, we’re approaching a profound demographic tipping point. According to an August 2008 report by the U.S. Census Bureau, those groups currently categorized as racial minorities—blacks and Hispanics, East Asians and South Asians—will account for a majority of the U.S. population by the year 2042. Among Americans under the age of 18, this shift is projected to take place in 2023, which means that every child born in the United States from here on out will belong to the first post-white generation. Obviously, steadily ascending rates of interracial marriage complicate this picture, pointing toward what Michael Lind has described as the “beiging” of America.

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As a purely demographic matter, then, the “white America” that Lothrop Stoddard believed in so fervently may cease to exist in 2040, 2050, or 2060, or later still. But where the culture is concerned, it’s already all but finished. Instead of the long-standing model of assimilation toward a common center, the culture is being remade in the image of white America’s multiethnic, multicolored heirs. For some, the disappearance of this centrifugal core heralds a future rich with promise.

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Not everyone was so enthused. . . . [I]in his 2001 book, The Death of the West, [Pat] Buchanan rote: “Mr. Clinton assured us that it will be a better America when we are all minorities and realize true ‘diversity.’ Well, those students [at Portland State] are going to find out, for they will spend their golden years in a Third World America.” Today, the arrival of what Buchanan derided as “Third World America” is all but inevitable.

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You can flee into whiteness as well. This can mean pursuing the authenticity of an imagined past: think of the deliberately white-bread world of Mormon America, where the ’50s never ended, or the anachronistic WASP entitlement flaunted in books like last year’s A Privileged Life: Celebrating WASP Style, a handsome coffee-table book compiled by Susanna Salk, depicting a world of seersucker blazers, whale pants, and deck shoes. . . . But these enclaves of preserved-in-amber whiteness are likely to be less important to the American future than the construction of whiteness as a somewhat pissed-off minority culture.

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Like other forms of identity politics, white solidarity comes complete with its own folk heroes, conspiracy theories (Barack Obama is a secret Muslim! The U.S. is going to merge with Canada and Mexico!), and laundry lists of injustices. The targets and scapegoats vary—from multiculturalism and affirmative action to a loss of moral values, from immigration to an economy that no longer guarantees the American worker a fair chance—and so do the political programs they inspire.

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[T]his white identity politics helped swing the 2000 and 2004 elections, serving as the powerful counterpunch to urban white liberals, and the McCain-Palin campaign relied on it almost to the point of absurdity (as when a McCain surrogate dismissed Northern Virginia as somehow not part of “the real Virginia”) as a bulwark against the threatening multiculturalism of Barack Obama. Their strategy failed, of course, but it’s possible to imagine white identity politics growing more potent and more forthright in its racial identifications in the future, as “the real America” becomes an ever-smaller portion of, well, the real America, and as the soon-to-be white minority’s sense of being besieged and disdained by a multicultural majority grows apace.

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There will be dislocations and resentments along the way, but the demographic shifts of the next 40 years are likely to reduce the power of racial hierarchies over everyone’s lives, producing a culture that’s more likely than any before to treat its inhabitants as individuals, rather than members of a caste or identity group.