How Nice to Be Rich…

920x920

The rich are busy with survivalism, not only buying insanely expensive luxury bunkers, but a whole survivalist community is going up in Texas. (Where else?) Oh, pardon me, they refer to it as a long-term sustainability community, not a survival community. This is a country club based community, with capacity for about 1,600 people. I imagine we’d be talking rich white people here. I’m not in the least rich, and I’m not all the way white, but I’ve had a longstanding interest in sustainability, especially when it comes to Indigenous people having their land stolen over and over, and their ability to sustain themselves ripped away in order to give yet more to people who don’t give one shit about sustainable resources. Now it looks like sustainability and clean energy are really only for those who can afford it, and are allowed into the country club. I’d be willing to bet that every asshole who buys into this place has fought any initiative on climate change and clean energy tooth and fucking nail.

Trident Lakes is a 700-acre, $300 million development that’s billed as a “lavish country-club community” that’ developers say is “part private resort, part safe haven.” Trident Lakes CEO Jim O’Connor and spokesman Richie Whitt said the 400 planned condos will be able to house about 1,600 people total. The condos will range from 900 to 3,600 square feet in size and feature underground floors.

O’Connor understands there may be an inkling to look at Trident Lakes as a “doomsday survival community,” but said he doesn’t view his development in such terms. “We’ve evolved it into long-term sustainability instead of a survival community,” O’Connor said. “The concept is to build a community that will last two centuries or longer. That means we’re looking at designs that include earth structures that won’t be exposed to the elements.” Part of that longevity feature is building most of the condos underground.

O’Connor plans to make the community sustainable by including “off the grid” sources of food, water and energy. Communal greenhouses, an air purification system and even a DNA vault are also planned for the community.

On the upscale side of Trident Lakes, O’Connor plans on adding an equestrian center, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. O’Connor and Whitt haven’t disclosed a set price to move into the community yet. Whitt said the condos will be comparable to owning a second home.

[…]

“We’re looking into using different energy sources and innovative amenities,” O’Connor said. “This is not only a place to go in an emergency, but also a place people can enjoy living in year round.”

Via Houston Chronicle.

Empathy for White Conservatives? No.

merge

Kali Holloway has an excellent article up at Raw Story: Stop asking me to empathize with the white working class. Here’s just a bit of it:

[…] Trump stoked racial hatred, but he didn’t invent it, so stop acting like he did because it makes you feel good. The irony of this whole thing is that Trump knew better than a lot of “good” white folks—even recognized as well as folks of color did—how much white power and supremacy means to white people. From day one, he bet that it would be enough to get him elected. He ran a brilliant campaign, in a country where a brilliant campaign can almost solely consist of telling white people they might not be on top forever. He called it. Credit where it’s due.

The only surprise to come out of this election is how many, and how quickly, white people want us to empathize with the people who voted against our humanity, our right to exist in this place. Even before the election, the Washington Post actually had the audacity to berate us for not crying for the white working class. In the days since Trump won, the number of articles urging everybody to be cool to Trump’s America, to understand what they are facing, to hear their grievances, has added insult to injury. Bernie Sanders issued a statement saying Trump “tapped into the anger of a declining middle class that is sick and tired of establishment economics, establishment politics and the establishment media.” I read it at least three times and couldn’t find the words “white supremacy” anywhere in it.

Please miss me with all this nonsense. I’m not even going to get into how this is based on an easily refutable economic lie, especially since others have already spent precious time they’ll never get back breaking this down. But even if it was true—and I am well aware of what’s plaguing the white working class, from substance abuse to suicide to a loss of manufacturing jobs—I refuse to take part in the endless privileging of white pain above all others. (Martin Gilens, who has studied this stuff going way back, notes that when the media face of poverty is white, this country suddenly gets a lot more compassionate.) Latinos and African Americans remain worse off than the white working class—which is still the “largest demographic bloc in the workforce”—by pretty much every measurable outcome, from home ownership to life expectancy. Where are these appeals for us when we protest or riot against the systemic inequality we live with? Where are all the calls to recognize and understand our anger?

For hundreds of years, white people have controlled everything in this country: the executive office, Congress, the Supreme Court, the criminal justice system, Wall Street, the lending institutions, the history textbook industry, the false narrative that America cares about liberty and justice for all. But I need to understand white feelings of marginalization because a black man was in the White House for eight years? Because political correctness—a general plea for white people not to be as awful as they have been in the past— asked that white people put more effort into being decent than they felt up to? Because white folks didn’t like that feeling when politicians aren’t singularly focused on the hard times and struggles of their communities? Audre Lorde said (I wonder if that woman ever got sick of being right), “oppressors always expect the oppressed to extend to them the understanding so lacking in themselves.” For a people who have shamed black folks for supposedly always wanting a hand out, for being a problem of the entitlement state, I have never seen people who so firmly believe they are owed something.

Let me pass along some advice black folks have been given for a long time: stop being so angry and seeing yourself as a victim, and try pulling yourself up by your bootstraps. That’s really all I have for you right now, this re-gifting of wisdom. […]

I’ll stand with Ms. Holloway here, and I stand by Iris, too. Over at Death to Squirrels, I said that my days of empathizing with cons of any stripe are over, and they are. White people have gone full court whiny now, wanting everyone to pat them on the head and say, yes, yes, you have it so bad, darling. No. Even liberal white people are getting in on the Whine Wagon. “But you have to be nice to them! They’re just misunderstood!” My response to that? The fuck I do, and the fuck they are.

Before I go on, the standard disclaimer: no, all white people aren’t awful. No, all white people aren’t unrepentant bigots. No, all white people are not willfully ignorant assholes. Yes, lots of white people get it.

This nonsense of “you must have empathy for them, you must!” needs to stop, right now. The people who voted Trump into the position of president-elect did so for specific reasons, but the primary one is exactly what Ms. Holloway said: power. White people are all about power, and they love their privilege. Of course they listened to a fucking gold-plated idiot who told them their power as Mighty Whitey was slipping. They’ve already felt that, and yep, they’ve been very upset about it, and grabbed onto Trump with a death grip in order to get firmly ensconced on top of the people pile once more. I have no idea why white liberals have latched onto the tone argument; Trumpoids have no interest in anyone being nice and understanding, they want obeisance and submission. They want to be what they always have been in this country – lords of the manor. They want to be able to spit, sneer, and be in a position of authoritative judgment of all others. White cons have no use whatsoever for white liberals, either, so that makes the tone argument even more inexplicable.

I’ll be 59 in a matter of days. I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s. Tumultuous times, rife with change, change for the better. There was such hope in the ’70s, people had such faith in the future. This is not what we were dreaming about. The 80s saw the serious rise of conservatism once again, especially Christian conservatism. I’ve been around for the whole thing, and decade by decade, cons have gotten worse, more extreme, more hateful, more spiteful, more poisonous. It’s not a surprise the white wall of conservative xianity took their one chance to power, nor is it surprising that white supremacists have wrapped themselves around Trump like a cloak. All that, I understand. I don’t like it at all, but I understand it.

What I don’t understand is this hand-wringing call for sympathy, tea and cookies. No. No, no, no. When have Christian Cons every had empathy for anyone except themselves? When have white supremacists ever had empathy for anyone except themselves? Christian Cons and white supremacists are evil people, perfectly willing commit themselves to evil to gain their goals. We’re dealing with one of those acts of evil right now. They did the proverbial deal with the devil in order to get closer to all the things they want, and what they want, more than anything, is to stomp people into submission, one way or another. They want to stomp all those feminist sluts into the ground, removing any sort of bodily autonomy, unless it happens to be their bodily autonomy on the line, natch. “No More Uppity” might as well be their battle cry, along with the requisite god, guns, and bible business.

I haven’t recovered quite yet, but to anyone who thinks that “you gotta be nice to them” is some sort of strategy or argument, I have one response: Fuck No.

Kali Holloway’s full article is here, highly recommended. Also recommended: https://twitter.com/drskyskull/status/796916965956874241

Sunday Facepalm.

Mother, Jennifer Reynaga -- (NBC4 screen grab)

Mother, Jennifer Reynaga — (NBC4 screen grab)

A Los Angeles area substitute teacher has been fired after a student recorded him taunting Latino sixth graders about the election of Donald Trump, telling them their parents were going to be deported, reports NBC4.

According to Jennifer Reynaga, she expected Latino students to be harassed after the election of Trump who made bashing immigrants,and Mexicans in particular, a cornerstone of his campaign.

“I would think the kids would do it, but I never thought a teacher would do it,” said Reynaga said in an interview.

The Reynaga family turned over the recording, captured with another student’s cellphone, to the school district where the unidentified substitute physical education teacher can be heard speaking to students at Bret Harte Middle School in South Los Angeles.

“If you were born here, then your parents got to go. Then they will leave you behind, and you will be in foster care,” the teacher can be heard telling Reynaga’s 11-year-old daughter.

When the sixth grader asked how Trump would find them, the teacher replied, “I have your phone numbers, your address, your mama’s address, your daddy’s address. It’s all in the system, sweetie.”

Emphasis mine. So, this is adulthood, is it? A person supposedly mature enough to be trusted with children? Apparently, all those people who decided to cast a vote for Trump are immature assholes who represent a clear danger to others. This ‘teacher’ has been fired, but it’s not enough. Such incidents also need to see charges and arrests. Here in the lost country, it’s perfectly okay to abuse the hell out of people who are simply trying to keep water clean, to arrest them and charge them for doing nothing at all, but someone who threatens children has nothing happen outside the loss of their job. Welcome to Trump Land indeed.

Via NBC4 and Raw Story.

Another teacher is on the receiving end of a suspension, but for offending Trumpoids:

The Monterey Herald said that Mountain View High School placed teacher Frank Navarro on paid leave after a parent complained in an email about the lesson and statements that Navarro made in class.

Navarro — a 40-year classroom veteran and expert in Holocaust studies — said, “This feels like we’re trying to squash free speech. Everything I talk about is factually based. They can go and check it out. It’s not propaganda or bias if it’s based on hard facts.”

The school district, Navarro said, would neither reveal the contents of the complaint email nor go over the lesson plan with him to determine what the parent found problematic.

Mountain View/Los Altos High School District Superintendent Jeff Harding told the Herald that Navarro was originally suspended through Wednesday, Nov. 16, but he could return to the classroom as early as Monday.

“We are interested in getting Frank back in the classroom … we’re just trying to maintain our due diligence,” Harding said. “We have a heightened emotional environment right now with the election. It’s always a challenge to maintain a line in a classroom.”

Mountain View High School’s newspaper, the Oracle said that some of Navarro’s students that his lessons were “one-sided” and that he used language that Trump supporters would find offensive. Other students have defended the 65-year-old teacher, who has won multiple awards for his studies of the Nazi Holocaust.

[…]

“I’ve had Mexican kids come and say, ‘Hey, Mr. Navarro, I might be deported,’” he said. “Is it better to see bigotry and say nothing? That’s what the principal was telling me (during our conversation). In my silence, I would be substantiating the bigotry.”

Aaaaand:

sf

“Your headscarf isn’t allowed anymore. Why don’t you tie it around your neck and hang yourself with it off of your neck instead of your head.”

The note was signed, “America!”

Full story here.

The White Wall of Christianity.

ch

Religion was almost invisible during the presidential campaign, and yet it is the missing piece in understanding Mr. Trump’s victory. The Christian right worked largely under the national media’s radar this year, but it helped deliver the presidency to a thrice-married mogul who bragged about groping women and has been accused by multiple women of actually doing it.

They were willing to forgive Mr. Trump’s personal transgressions because he stoked their fears that a Hillary Clinton administration would take away their religious liberties, use their tax dollars to fund late-term abortions at home and abroad, and expand the rights of gay and transgender people, political analysts said. Mr. Trump warned at rallies and at conservative Christian gatherings that he alone was their last hope to protect them against a changing culture, using the refrain, “This is your last chance.”

Now that he has won, evangelical leaders say they are confident Mr. Trump will deliver on the political promises he made to them. These include appointing a conservative to the Supreme Court, defunding Planned Parenthood, protecting businesses that refuse to provide services for same-sex weddings and rescinding the mandate in the Affordable Care Act that requires insurance coverage for birth control.

And with Gov. Mike Pence of Indiana, an evangelical with a record of legislating against abortion and same-sex marriage, as vice president, Christian leaders say they feel reassured they will have access to the White House and a seat at the table.

I wrote about this in a comment at Pharyngula, because all kinds of people have been writing some less than stellar pieces about rural white Americans. A lot of people attempting to parse rural America don’t live in it. I do. I’m in a very tiny town in nDakota. This is what I wrote in that comment:

I live rural. One thing you often hear from people is “oh, I don’t understand that stuff”, so they go with confirmation bias. This is very clear when it comes to something like climate change. The rest of it can simply be explained by good old conservatism, the preserving of the colonial, Christian, white status quo. A lot of people who live rural are older, conservative, and fearful. They don’t approve of women being able to obtain abortions; they still think single women having sex is scandalous, and they don’t think it’s okay for them to pay for their contraception. They understand healthcare, but are terrified of “creeping socialism”, so they are against ACA. They aren’t terribly keen on that feminism stuff, and anything queer they find very unsettling, set their lips in a straight line and shake their heads. Most won’t come out and say anything nasty, but the “that’s unnatural” vibe is very strong. They don’t think it’s okay for queer people to marry, and they are easily scared by propaganda about transgender people using a public lav.

It is true, to an extent, that rural farmers feel isolated and ignored, but that’s not why they voted for Trump. They aren’t so stupid as to not understand that a one percenter doesn’t give a shit about them, but they think he’ll keep the conservative status quo.

I’ll add to this that to a large extent, in rural areas, you have people who will simply buy, lock, stock, and barrel, whatever the hell they hear on Fox. It seldom bothers them that all those screaming pundits who are pandering to fear don’t actually believe what they spout, but are happy enough to get rich off all those who swallow the shit whole. There are more resources than ever, when it comes to finding out whether or not a fear is legitimate; it’s easier than ever to educate yourself and learn, but in spite of that, most older rural people stay very insular on the internet, too. They might email, they might have an account at Facebook, but to them, the rest of the ‘net is as bewildering and just as frightening as the ‘real’ world. They yearn for those imaginary good old days, they want their 1950s back, when people of colour knew their place and those uppity women were properly punished if they had sex.

Christians have a great capacity for hypocrisy and cognitive dissonance. In a matter of a few short decades, they’ve gone from denouncing politicians who couldn’t keep their pants zipped, and other activities they considered immoral. That doesn’t matter anymore. What matters now is the ends justifying the means. Oh, when a raging pundit gets caught with his pants around his ankles while swallowing fistfuls of illegal drugs? Eh, we should pray for the poor man. Bill Clinton gets a blow job? Pretty sure most people remember the conservative Christian outrage on that on. Trump is a sexual predator, a rapist, and a cheater, but white Christians don’t seem terribly concerned about that. Nor are they terribly concerned about the amount of boys who are grabbing girls by the crotch, claiming it’s okay because the Prez said so. Those Christian values are amazingly elastic, they expand and contract to either cover something unacceptable, or to exclude anything or anyone disapproved of by them.

As recently as five years ago, Christians were far more judgmental of politicians accused of transgressions in their personal lives. Now, in the era of Mr. Trump, there is more tolerance, especially among evangelicals, according to a study by Mr. Jones’s institute. The group often called “values voters” was not dissuaded by headlines about Mr. Trump sexually harassing women, lying, refusing to pay taxes or stiffing contractors.

“Trump has really changed their entire political ethic. It’s moved from a principled basis to more of a utilitarian ethic, where the ends justify the means,” Mr. Jones said.

The hypocrisy there is absolutely stunning, but Christians excel at justifying the most awful and evil actions. They are quite comfortable with evil, and being evil, because they always think it’s okay if they do it. It’s only wrong if those others do it. Yes, Christians have marched fascism into power, and like fascists before, they have all the justifications in the world why it’s the right thing to do. In order to get their way, in order to be in control of other people, they have joined arms with the very worst of white supremacists. As evil blossoms in this lost country, white Christians will continue to justify the flames even as they are being consumed by them.

Two sources here: Religious Right Believes Donald Trump Will Deliver on His Promises and The Rage of White, Christian America.

Recommended Reading: What happens in the US doesn’t stay in the US.

The Coming Storm.

Credit: NASA.

Credit: NASA.

Trump’s policies would also be creating failed states at America’s doorstep. Here is what a 2015 NASA study projected the normal climate of North America will look like (under the kind of fossil-fuel-intensive growth Trump has promised). The darkest areas have soil moisture comparable to that seen during the 1930s Dust Bowl.

Our poorer neighbors to the south will be engulfed by near-permanent Dust Bowl or severe drought. At the same time, their coastal areas (and ours) will be trying to “adapt” to sea level rise of perhaps 6 or more feet by 2100 (rising as much as a foot a decade after that). For all but the wealthiest, abandonment will be the primary adaptation strategy.

Inevitably, over a hundred million people from Mexico and Central America will be trying to find a place to live that isn’t anywhere near as hot and dry, that has enough fresh water and food to go around. They won’t be looking south.

Tragically, Donald Trump combines xenophobia with a vow to be the world’s primary obstacle to preserving a livable climate for our southern neighbors. It’s like we would be setting fire to our neighbor’s house and farm — and then blocking efforts by the fire department to put the fire out AND at the same time condemning any notion that we have an obligation to house and feed them.

Trump would be creating the perfect conditions for failed states and violence in North America.

A world where President Trump succeeds in thwarting or reversing climate action is a world with dozens of Syrias and Darfurs and Pakistani mega-floods, a world with hundreds of millions of climate refugees in the coming decades, all clamoring to move to places that aren’t flooded or Dust-Bowlified, including parts of the United States.

It would be a world where everyone eventually becomes a veteran, a refugee, or a casualty of war. That’s something worth remembering this Veteran’s Day.

That’s just a small excerpt from a very good article taking a look at what climate change has already brought about, and how it’s going to get much worse. Yes, there are things we can do to help avert the worst, but thinking people already know we’re in this very late, and all we can do right now is to mitigate all the damage we have done. That mitigation requires cooperation and change. Two things Trump is incapable of are cooperation and change. He has vowed to go full bore ahead on dirty energy, ripping the earth apart in a quest for more, more, more, without one thought to the very near future. If you have children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and you voted for that maniac, you have just screwed them, and their future into the ground. Unfortunately, you decided to screw over everyone else, too.

Trump is a silver spoon idiot, a person who can barely think at all, is of little education,* doesn’t read, and doesn’t care about anything except himself. He inherited wealth, and an inflated sense of entitlement. That sense of entitlement is what drives him now, and in that quest, he will ensure he does his damnedest to hasten the death of most life on our planet, that life including yours and that of those you love.

*No, I don’t care if you didn’t go to college. Hell, I don’t care if you didn’t make it through high school. I do care whether or not you have learned throughout your life, whether you have made an effort to learn about things happening in the world. If you haven’t, and you’ve just sat on your ass letting any con man fill your head with shit, you deserve what you’ve brought down, but the rest of us? No, we don’t deserve that.

Full article here. In other climate news: Trump victory puts the chill on international climate talks. Court rules that children can sue the government over climate negligence.

Will Trump go down in history as the man who pulled the plug on a livable climate?
The fate of humanity is in the hands of a denier who pledged to kill domestic and global climate action and all clean energy research.

DAPL Ignores Army Corp. Again.

Courtesy Dr0ne2bewild Shiyé Bidziil/Vimeo. Energy Transfer Partners has gone so far as to build its drilling pad for tunneling under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, even though it still awaits the necessary easements.

Courtesy Dr0ne2bewild Shiyé Bidziil/Vimeo.
Energy Transfer Partners has gone so far as to build its drilling pad for tunneling under the Missouri River at Lake Oahe, even though it still awaits the necessary easements.

The U.S. Department of Justice is about to announce next steps on de-escalating the standoff regarding construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, according to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe.

“Today, the Department of Justice announced in federal court that it will be announcing the next steps on a ‘path forward’ for the Dakota Access Pipeline crossing at Lake Oahe,” said Standing Rock Sioux Chairman David Archambault II in a statement on November 10.

Energy Transfer Partners is refusing to stand down on its construction plans despite two requests from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that it do so.

The company, builders of the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL), said on Tuesday November 8 that it planned to begin drilling in two weeks—even though at the moment it does not have the easements necessary for it to tunnel under the river legally.

Full story at ICTMN.

“You can troll these people and definitely get some of them to kill themselves.”

446-618x403

The white supremacist assholes at Daily Stormer have a list of of people who tweeted their dismay, upset, and fears about the election, with this added on:

You can troll these people and definitely get some of them to kill themselves.

Just be like “it’s the only way you can prove to the racists that Hillary was right all along.”

“Mass Suicides After Trump Victory” would be a headline the media would play up, but all it would do would demoralize the left even further.

GOGOGOGOGOGOGO!

If you’re on Twitter, consider putting blocks in place, taking a break from it, or if not that, be forewarned about harassment, and if you need help, please, please, reach out. There’s an extensive list of health resources here.

Daily Lynching.

dl

Students at the University of Pennsylvania were subjected to a GroupMe group called “N*gger lynching.” But Penn officials have learned that the group was started by students in Oklahoma. Raw Story has been compiling a list that is currently just under 100 incidents of assault, overt racism and intimidation coming from Donald Trump supporters following the election. They range in severity from hurtful to criminal. From signs over water fountains saying “white” and “colored” to a 10-year-old girl having her genitals grabbed by a boy in school because the president told him he could do it.

“Earlier today a number of Black freshmen students at Penn were added to a racist Group Me Account that appears to be based in Oklahoma,” Penn said in a statement. “The account contains violent, racist and thoroughly repugnant images and messages. Our police and information security staff are trying to locate the exact source and see what steps can be taken to cut the account off. Staff in the office of VPUL are trying to determine exactly how many students were impacted and how best to provide support.”

The Daily Penn also reported that black freshmen were added to another group called “Mud Men” and “Trump Is Love.” Both groups had explicit and racist messages. While those responsible may have done this to silence students of color it has only empowered them. The paper reports students are now organizing.

Via Raw Story. Don’t be one of those idiots who tries to tell me it really won’t be that bad. It already is.

Oh, all the gods No. Fuck No.

Sarah Palin.

Sarah Palin.

…According to reports, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a top contender for secretary of the interior.

Trump mentioned he would like to appoint Palin to a position within his administration when she endorsed him in January 2016.

[…]

It looks like that role might be secretary of the interior, according to Politico. The secretary of the interior leads the Department of the Interior, responsible for the nation’s public lands and natural resources. The department oversees land, water and other natural resources, protects fish and wildlife and preserves the environment and historic places around the country. The department also coordinates relations with tribal communities and island territories.

Palin has developed a political platform based on making the U.S. energy independent.

“Energy is my baby,” she said in an interview with CNN in September 2015. “Oil and gas and minerals – those things that God has dumped on this part of the earth for mankind’s use instead of us relying on unkind foreign nations for us to import their resources.”

[…]

Other contenders for Trump’s secretary of the interior pick include Forrest Lucas, the founder of Lucas Oil, Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin and venture capitalist Robert Grady, among others.

Via Raw Story. The Southern Poverty Law Center has an article up about the Trump Team, and to say it’s a nightmare is an understatement. Every corrupt, hateful person you can think of, they are there. Politico is also covering this.

I barely have words here. It doesn’t really matter who is appointed, whoever it is will go full scale rapacious, ensuring we have land which cannot support life, and water that is poisoned. Congratulations, all you fucking Trumpidiots,* you’ve signed the beginning of our death warrant.

* Yes, if you voted for a third party, wrote someone in, or abstained, you are a Trumpidiot. No, I’m not letting you off the hook. This was a binary choice, that was blindingly obvious, and no one can honestly deny that. Rather than do the right thing, you made a conscious decision to do the wrong thing. Your little act of rebelliousness may have given you satisfaction at the time, but I hope with all my heart it has been slammed home to you what you have done, the immense wrong you have helped to perpetrate against millions of people; against our planet, and all the life on it.

“Hey Nigger. Pick that up. Keep my streets clean.”

Shaun King has been tracking hate incidents, which are piling up at an alarming rate. I read about 30 something of them in this article at Raw Story, and I just can’t take anymore. The tweet I posted above is one of the milder ones. This is, I don’t know, I don’t have a word. Nightmare sounds positively pleasant in comparison to what is taking place now. Going by the words and the actions of all the Trumpians, and the children of those toxic people, they’d be just great with concentration camps. They are already busy treating people as worse than animals, they are treating people as things, and that always leads to the greatest of ills.

White Power and Bigotry Echo in the Halls of Education.

https://www.facebook.com/rayalexandertv/videos/10207493761174137/

The group “Parents of York County School of Technology Students” said on Facebook that members had received reports that “Trump’s presidential win was announced at school today amidst chants of ‘white power.’ That white students referred to other races as their slaves, and at some points even spit on those students.”

[…]

Social media accounts collected by WHP indicated that the racial tensions had caused fights at the school. One student said that she had her breasts grabbed by another student who claimed “it was his right.”

The school confirmed to WHP that the incidents were being investigated. Via Raw Story.

Racist graffiti at Maple Grove High School also supports Donald Trump (Facebook).

Racist graffiti at Maple Grove High School also supports Donald Trump (Facebook).

Just hours after Donald Trump won 2016 presidential race, students at Maple Grove High School returned to class to find racist messages inspired by the GOP candidate.

On Wednesday, a father of a Maple Grove student posted on Facebook images of graffiti that were taken by his son.

“He does not feel safe at his own school any more,” Fred Ndip said. “I am not sure what to tell him!”

The photos show a locker door with large letters that read: “F*ck N****rs”

Other messages on the door included: “F*ck all porch monkeys,” “Whites only” and “White America.”

The words “Trump Train” were also on the door.

[…]

“I went in and looked on the bathroom door and honestly was in shock. That’s the first time I honestly felt like crying at school,” junior Moses Karngbaye told WCCO. “I just walked back to class with my head down, I was like I can’t believe people actually took the time out of their day to write something this offensive.”

Karngbaye said that he took photos of graffiti that said “All you ‘N’ go back to Africa” and “Now the white people are going to take over.”

In a statement on Wednesday, Osseo Area Schools confirmed that the photos were real, and that an investigation was underway.

Via Raw Story.

https://www.facebook.com/immigrationtalk.mexicanamerican/videos/1144505275587036/

For those wondering how Donald Trump could ever have won a state like Michigan after it supported Barack Obama this video explains a lot.

A small group of students at Royal Oak Middle School in Detroit, Michigan broke out into chants of “Build the wall” the day after the election, according to The Detroit News.

According to a Facebook video of the event that has now gone viral, “Latino children were crying.” Dee Perez-Scott, who posted the video, said, “the taunts, the “Build that Wall” with such bullying power and hate from children to children. Just Horrifying!”

“We addressed this incident when it occurred. We are addressing it today,” Royal Oak Schools superintendent Shawn Lewis-Lakin said in a statement today. “We are working with our students to help them understand the impact of their words and actions on others in their school community,” the statement continued.

As of Thursday morning, officers from the Royal Oak Police Department have been on hand and will be throughout the day, Lt. Keith Spencer said.

Via Raw Story.

Doll hanging from noose at Canisius College (Twitter).

Doll hanging from noose at Canisius College (Twitter).

Students at a western New York college are alarmed after they found a black doll hung in effigy on campus — and they wondered whether racial harassment will grow worse with the election of Donald Trump.

The doll hanging from a noose was discovered Wednesday in an elevator at Canisius College in Buffalo, where the student government has promised to address the incident, reported WKBW-TV.

A black student-athlete told the TV station he was considering leaving the campus, saying he’d experienced similar racist bullying since enrolling at Canisius, where 71.9 percent of students are white and 6.9 percent are black.

The college president said Canisius would investigate the incident and punish anyone responsible for the “stupid act.”

Several students told the TV station they feared racial harassment would grow worse with the election of Trump as president.

About 90 miles away, in Wellsville, New York, residents painted over swastika graffiti found on a baseball dugout in town.

[…]

Swastika graffiti, including the words, “Sieg heil 2016,” was also spotted on a building Wednesday in Philadelphia.

Via Raw Story.

I would really like to think that every single person who voted for Trump was deeply ashamed by what they have done, that there was an ounce of decency in them somewhere, but I can’t think that, because this is what they wanted. This is the poisonous shit you have force fed your own children. You should be beyond shamed, but you are not.

This Is Racism.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

Supporters of Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump react as they watch the election results during Trump’s election night rally, Tuesday, Nov. 8, 2016, in New York. CREDIT: AP/John Locher.

[…] America’s demographics are changing, and they’re changing quickly. By 2055, there will no longer be a single racial or ethnic majority in the United States and 14 percent of the country will be foreign born, according to the Pew Research Center. Forty-three percent of Millennials are people of color.

Let’s be clear: This is scaring white voters. White people believe that they are more often the victims of racism than black people, according to a 2011 new study from researchers at Tufts University’s School of Arts and Sciences and Harvard Business School. The research also found that white voters perceived social progress for people of color to be much swifter than it actually is.

The authors wrote, “These data are the first to demonstrate that not only do whites think more progress has been made toward equality than do blacks, but whites also now believe that this progress is linked to a new inequality — at their expense.”

Research has also established that as U.S. demographics shift, the pro-white and racist attitudes of white people become more apparent, according to a study from New York University and Northwestern University. The same researchers also found those who read about these demographic changes often are generally more supportive of conservative policies and more likely to identify as conservative.

Throughout history, there are many examples of how the racism of white voters has been mobilized to favor a candidate for president. We saw Barry Goldwater and President Richard Nixon employ the Southern Strategy, which took advantage of white people’s anxieties about the economic and social advancement of people of color. Writing in Slate, Jamelle Bouie describes this pattern of progress and white backlash, starting with the Reconstruction:

Like clockwork, white Americans embraced a man who promised a kind of supremacy. We haven’t left our long cycle of progress and backlash. We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.

We have also seen these fears manifest themselves overseas as European far-right political parties with anti-immigrant sentiments win historic victories.

The fear of white voters — the fear we will no longer be at the center of American politics and culture, having our needs tended to first, and the fear that we will be asked to acknowledge our role in white supremacy and to stop doing harm to people of color, whether it be violence or perpetuating racist stereotypes — has always been there. Now, we need to acknowledge that it is largely what motivated Trump voters. A majority of Trump supporters said they saw black people as “less evolved” than white people, according to a Slate survey with a sample of 2,000 non-Hispanic white people.

When we say that class is what takes a Trump voter from dangerous to misguided and confused, we are condescending to low-income people living in rural areas. By doing this, the media takes away their agency and suggests they didn’t know any better. But they know exactly what they have done. […]

Yes, they do know exactly what they’ve done, and they all have their little justifications for doing it, and it all goes back to the comfort of being on top of the people pile, being assured that yes, of course white people are superior, and you have every right in the world to stomp all over those others. My state, nDakota, had a great deal to do with Trump being elected, and I can’t even begin to express how uncomfortable I am right now, how much anxiety and fear fills me whenever I look at any white person in this state, knowing there’s a high probability they voted for that xenophobic, homophobic bigot, open racist, a rapist, a sexual predator, a con man, an open fraud, a sociopath, pathological liar, climate change denier and ignorant asspimple. Much like my country, my home [state] has disappeared, swallowed whole by intolerant assholes who think they are owed the right to stomp on other people, to oppress, to marginalize, to own, to rule. There just aren’t enough fucks in the universe for those of you to whom nothing was more important than your shallow need to control other people, to safeguard your racism. *spits*

The full story is at Think Progress.

Local White Nationalists Gleeful.

Donald Trump’s presidential campaign elevated the voices of explicitly white nationalist movements, including the online haters in the alt-right, who had previously been largely shunned from the larger conservative movement.

It’s no wonder, then, that many of these white nationalist activists celebrated Trump’s victory last night as their own, expressing hope that the president-elect would fulfill their dreams of deporting undocumented immigrants, continue to wake “white racial consciousness” and hire like-minded people to staff his administration.

Via Right Wing Watch and Think Progress.