Racism is a House…or Something

The National “Conversation” Brad Paisley Would Like Us To Have About How He’s Not A Racist

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 4/11/13 in RaceFiles / 1 response

Country singer Brad Paisley wants to have a national conversation on race. Paisley began that “conversation” with his single Accidental Racist, a painfully tortured defense against accusations of racism brought against him for wearing a rebel flag. The rebel flag, I remind you, is a symbol of white supremacy, raised by the rebel army in defense of slavery, and then brought back after the war by the Ku Klux Klan as a symbol of resistance to Reconstruction. The song includes a performance by rapper LL Cool Jay who provides the counterpoint in the conversation. He asks, among other things, that Read more »

The Other Side of Anti-Black Racism

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 4/3/13 in RaceFiles / 9 responses

Give me a place to stand on and I will move the earth – Archimedes I’ve argued in the past that the fulcrum of white supremacy is anti-black racism. A fulcrum, you probably already know, is what one rests a lever on to give it, well, leverage. Without it, a lever is just a stick. I’ve called anti-black racism the fulcrum of white supremacy because I believe fear and loathing of black people is the driving force behind our racial politics. It has shaped everything from welfare policy to policing. While today unions may be working people’s best friend, Read more »

Why I Support Same Sex Marriage as a Civil Right, But Not as a Strategy to Achieve Structural Change

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 3/25/13 in RaceFiles / 104 responses

The pending Supreme Court decisions concerning the constitutionality of California Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act have pushed discussion of same-sex marriage into the mainstream of the news cycle, with many civil rights advocates convinced that regardless of the court’s decision, eventual victory is a done deal. I don’t disagree. I’ve also argued in support of same sex marriage rights. However, I have some serious worries about the broad implications of this victory. Why? First, the obvious. Marriage is a conservative institution. It licenses certain kinds of relationships and not others based on a template that reproduces a Read more »

Challenging Asian Privilege

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 3/14/13 in RaceFiles / 11 responses

Remember the Asian F episode of the TV series Glee? Given it’s name, I definitely caught it. In it, the character of Mike Chang (Harry Shum, Jr.) get’s a A- on a chemistry test and his father loses it, demanding that he quit his girlfriend and the glee club. Apparently, A- is an Asian F. Mike’s girlfriend is also an Asian American burdened with Tiger parents demanding nothing less than perfect grades and money machine career aspirations. The Glee writers deserve a little grief for this episode, but I’d go easy on them. They are, after all, no exception when Read more »

What’s Wrong with Inclusion? The Case for Radicalism

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 1/29/13 in RaceFiles / 4 responses

Radical (adj.): 1. of, relating to, or proceeding from a root. 2: of or relating to the origin : fundamental. 3: marked by a considerable departure from the usual or traditional. A few days ago, I made the argument that attacks against LGBT rights, including the right to marry, rely on a template that is as much about racism as homophobia. We should all get behind the LGBT agenda in order to strengthen democratic rights for everyone. Having said that, however, I do have a bone to pick with pundits and political strategists who’ve been popularizing the meme that LGBT Read more »

When Welfare Was White: What The Fight Over the Safety Net Is Really All About

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 10/8/12 in RaceFiles / 5 responses

Much has been written about the fight over the social safety net. Many say that Newt Gingrich calling President Obama the “food stamps president,” and Mitt Romney lying about the President dropping the work requirement in welfare is dog whistle racism meant to gin up a base they’ve spent 50 years building with racist appeals to civil rights backlash. I agree. But I also think there’s something missing from that argument. We have, it seems to me, become so focused on trying to demonize conservatives as racists that we are missing just how fundamental racism has always been to the Read more »

Racism is a House…or Something

by Scot Nakagawa posted on 6/4/12 in RaceFiles / 2 responses

When discussions of racism come up, folks are quick to remind me that race is not a real thing – it’s just a social construct. I agree. Race isn’t “real” in the sense that it’s not based in biology and it sure isn’t based on geographic difference. I mean, just check out Asia. What do Japan and Iran have in common other than some idea about the “Orient” invented by Europeans, right? But this idea of race as a social construct is pretty academic. And folks often preface “social construct” with the word “just,” as if the fact that race Read more »

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