Explaining the world one tragedy at a time.

November 30, 2015November 30, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 4 Comments

November 30, 2015

The world can seem so chaotic. Does it ever take a break?

Sometimes, in my line of work, things get a little busy. I’ve been getting a lot of media time lately. From local hate crimes to the global terror alert, from suspected Klan activity in Oregon to responses to the Black Lives Matter movement. Throw Paris into it and a few other issues in the news flow and I’ve been in overdrive lately. I’ve written about playing the role of “expert” in the media and hopefully I mentioned that I never get paid for any of it. But there’s a reason I’m on your TV.

The world can seem so chaotic. But a lot of it is our media-saturated culture. Sociologist (and now Lewis & Clark University president) Barry Glassner wrote about this in his 1999 book, The Culture of Fear. Just think about the local news. When I was a kid it was on for a half-hour at 6 and 11 pm. The local news in Portland starts at 4 am and then occupies at least 8 hours of daily broadcasting on each channel until 11:35 pm. That’s a lot of space to fill. And “if it bleeds it leads” can drive each one of those hours. Terrorism abroad, mass shootings at home, and a story about packages being stolen off porches for good measure. It’s enough to keep a person inside their house and watching TV. Suffice it to stay, research shows that the more TV people watch, the more fearful they are of the world.

I can either try to ignore it or subvert it from the inside. So the reason I say yes to most local, national, and international media requests is that it provides an opportunity to slip a critical perspective into the shockingly uncritical news paradigm. And this is usually a feminist perspective. For example, the numerous mass shootings I’m called to comment on must include an analysis that this is male violence in a culture that promotes violence as an acceptable means for men to express themselves. Can you imagine if all these shootings were by females?

So we hop from crisis to crisis trying to patiently explain things to people who are often resistant to anything other than the explanation that fits their picture of the world. A perfect example is the folks who blurt “All lives matter” in opposition to the Black Lives Matter movement. These people are either ignorant (which is something we all share about different things) or they are straight up racists. So here is the simplest explanation I can offer these folks: “Black lives matter,” means all lives matter, including black lives that have been devalued by the criminal justice system and racism in general. Got it? It does not mean your white life doesn’t matter. Now shut the fuck up.

Often I offer an analysis to try to explain a very complex social problem and what gets on the air is a three second sound byte that really doesn’t explain much. That’s why I prefer live TV and radio because you can go for the one point that really want to make. I learned this the hard way when I appeared on Fox News’ The O’Reilly Factor. Bill O’Reilly just talked over me the whole time. One of my conservative friends emailed me and said, “You just should have yelled over him.” I guess that’s how Fox rolls. Lesson learned.

There is a root cause that links most of this together and it’s patriarchy. Friday’s shooting at the Colorado Planned Parenthood clinic is an obvious example. Conservatives wage a war on women’s advancement and rights. A Trump follower commented on this blog recently, “Does your wife bring home the bacon while you blog and change diapers or take of your children? Very manly there. Get a real life fool.” Trump, Fiorina and others spread lies about Planned Parenthood to their war-loving moronic minions who just want to bomb SOMETHING. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that this week’s domestic terrorist (aka, right-wing white male) attacks a women’s health center with an AK while ranting about Obama and “baby parts.” This is what patriarchy looks like.

There is also feminist perspective on the racial issue. The dehumanization of other people, including African Americans and Syrian refugees (who my cousin compared to snakes and Ben Carson likened to rabid dogs) starts with the dehumanization of women. Religions with male gods do this especially well. It’s easy to claim power over someone who you think is a child or an animal or a thing. Or a terrorist.

There’s just not a lot of places to get the macro analysis in the mainstream media. We just get little corners of the real issues that are at the core of the nightly news stories. Where is bell hooks or Noam Chomsky being interviewed on the news? Lord knows, there’s enough time to fit them in. But instead we get sound byte analysis for the short-attention span masses. Here’s a clip of Trump mocking a disabled person. Here’s a talking head saying his followers could care less and on to the next non-story.

I became a feminist in my head a long time ago because it helped to explain the big picture throughout human history. I became a feminist in my heart with the arrival of my daughter and the hope the world could finally make a great leap forward for her generation. That the trifles of Trump and travails of war would become artifacts of the past. (This optimism may come from watching too much Star Trek.)

And I’m happy to take my show on the road. Last week I was in Washington, D.C., making a case for the re-evaluation of hate crime laws at a meeting of criminologists from around the world. This week I’m off to New York City where I’ll be discussing how plea bargains institutionalize racism at a university in Manhattan. You can’t shut me up. These issues are too important. And yeah, I’m going to continue to be pissed off at the people who choose not to get it. Their world is changing and they are becoming an obnoxious minority (not a “silent majority”). But that keeps me going and at some point we can talk about the big picture.

See ya in the funny papers.

Trump Part 2 – This is what fascism looks like.

September 14, 2015November 26, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 58 Comments

September 14, 2015

Trumpmania has infected everything, including my parenting blog. My piece comparing Trump’s rhetoric to the white supremacists I’ve studied for almost 30 years went viral, pushing Watching the Wheels way over 100,000 views. As it spread, I started doing interviews, including with Spanish languages radio stations and a newspaper in Spain. On Wednesday, I will be appearing on Al Jazeera’s The Stream to talk Trump. The blog got reposted on Countrpunch and my comment section has taken on a life of its own.

If you are one of the few folks who hasn’t clicked on that post, here it is:

“Donald Trump is the new face of white supremacy,” says hate crime expert.

I promise to get back to writing about my daughter later this week. She’s doing amazing things. But I wanted to further clarify my argument about the GOP front-runner and reality show star. First, let me be clear, I don’t think all of Trump’s supporters are racists, even though people at his rallies have been chanting “White power!” and talking about killing immigrants and at least two of his followers have been arrested for committing a hate crime against a Latino man in Boston. To borrow from Mr. Trump, some of his followers, I assume, are good people.

It’s clear from Trump’s followers that America’s favorite billionaire can do no wrong. This includes lie. Trump “tells it like it is.” To allude to Bill Clinton at his worst, it depends on what your definition of “is” is. Trump makes up “facts” that are completely untrue but the followers follow unquestioningly. There’s an f word for that; fascism.

Trump is a demagogue in the truest sense of the word. He could come out in favor of eating immigrant babies and his Trumpies would cheer, “What a brilliant idea!” A study found that when you give a Trumpie a classic liberal issue but say that Trump supports it, they suddenly support it. Another survey found that 66% of his supporters think Obama is a Kenyan Muslim. These are followers in the truest sense and they remind me of the white supremacist followers I’ve spent my life studying. They want a black and white world and an easy solution, like build a wall.

But what I really wanted to write about was the techniques Trump borrows from Klansman, neo-Nazis, Patriot Militia members and other extremists on the far right. This is how you create a movement based on hate and fear.

Anecdotes – Trump is the master of using one crime story to “prove” that Mexican immigrants are rapists and killers. He’ll drag a few headlines out from cases that are far from resolved. (You’re innocent until proven guilty in America, unless have brown skin and can be used by Trump.) He denies two very important facts. People are overwhelming raped and killed by people they know. (Sorry, white people. Most crime is intra-racial, not inter-racial.) And repeated studies show that immigrants have lower crime rates than non-immigrants.

I’ve seen more than one Nazi skinhead and Klansman point to story in the news about a black criminal to prove their racism, ignoring ALL the stories about crime committed by whites. It’s called selective perception. They are still talking about OJ! Proof black people are BAD.

Conspiracy theories – We can all enjoy a good conspiracy theory. Who killed JFK? The illegal aliens from Roswell! You know who really loved conspiracy theories? Adolf Hitler. The Jews run the banks! Get ‘em! This funny little theory is still popular with neo-Nazis, Islamic extremists and Lyndon Larouche. I like to ask my Jewish friends when the next cabal meeting is and they just look confused. Those sneaky Jews.

Donald Trump has his own conspiracy theory. The Mexican government is sending its worst people across the border. His only evidence of this is that he’s “talked to people” on the border who know. Right. My wife came to America from Mexico by walking across a border, so I asked her who sent her to the USA. She said her mother. Oh, those clever Mexicans.

Conspiracy theories give simple people a simple view of how the world works and allow them to sidestep the complexities of reality. Illegal immigration is a complex issue. “Ow! That makes my brain hurt! Donald says it’s the clever Mexican government pulling one over on our stupid leaders in Washington!” Um, most of those leaders are Congressional Republicans that you voted for. “Ow! My brain!”

Us vs. them – White supremacists love to see themselves as a defined tribe that is under siege by external enemies. Jews, homosexuals, African-Americans. Basically 3/4 of the cast of The View. They see themselves as the “real” Americans, or as the 1920s Klan said, “100% American.” The homosexuals are destroying traditional (arranged?) marriage! Muslims are destroying our (WASP) religious monopoly!

Trump sees America under attack, by Mexican immigrants, Chinese businessmen (“They’re killing us,” he keeps saying) and mad nuclear scientists in Iran. He has no time for our internal problems unless he can simply blame it on “stupid leaders.” You know, because he has such a clear solution to childhood poverty, failing schools and America’s obesity epidemic. “I’ll hire the best people,” he keeps saying. Um, the President of the United States doesn’t hire anybody, Donnie.

The bullet points Trump uses were lifted right from Dylan Roof, the young man who killed nine people in a black church in Charleston this spring. Roof said, as his massacre of the black parishioners was under way, “You rape our women, and you’re taking over our country, and you have to go.” Trump says that at every stop.

Apocalyptic visions – White supremacists see the end coming very soon. They think that Obama is going to suspend democracy and herd whites into camps. Or that Black Lives Matters activists are going to just declare open season on white people. Christian extremists like the Ku Klux Klan and the Aryan Nations folks see a biblical confrontation looming. They call it “Rahowa,” short for Racial Holy War. So if “we don’t do something,” America as we know it will be ripped from our (white) hands.

Trump does the exact same thing. Walking on stage to REM’s “It’s the End of the World As We Know It” (unironically) only made the point that much more clear. Does he feel fine about it? You betcha, because all this end times talk lifts his numbers in the polls. It’s a classic technique used by Nazis, gun dealers, and used car salesman. “Things are about to change so buy this Uzi/Pinto/Trump vote right now or you’ll regret it!” Trump has his followers believing that if they don’t vote for him, America will become a 4th World nation in a matter of days.

The thing that makes Trump a fascist is that all this is built on a cult of personality. He’s hard not to watch. I feel addicted to him at times. But listen to him talk. It’s all about him. How popular he is and how rich he is and how good looking he is. Just look at that face! There is no discussion about real Americans and the real issues they are struggling with or finding success with. Much has written about Trump’s narcissism but I would just like a word count of the number of times he uses the word “I.”

So why do so many Americans follow this buffoon? There are two very simple reasons. The first is he speaks in simple terms. Health care is a complex issue. Just say it’s “illegal aliens” having “anchor babies” on your tax dollar. It’s us verses them and them has a big conspiracy running out of Mexico City and Bejing. What 5-year-old couldn’t understand that? Keep it simple. America was better in the past (when, he hasn’t said) so let’s make America great again. Say it over and over. It’s the new “White power!” mantra.

The second reason is that he’s got a convenient scapegoat. If this was 1980, he’d blame Japan and Iran and he’d have lots of followers. In 1988, white America was ready to blame all it’s problem on black criminals and Bush Sr. rode into the White House on the back of Willie Horton. Now the “I’m not racist, but…” Americans are ready to lay the blame on a familiar target. It’s not on the corporate elites, many of whom are stealing money right out of the accounts of Trump’s followers. Instead, let’s go after the folks on the bottom who are working in fields and meat packing plants and cannot defend themselves like Trump’s friends on Wall Street can. It’s a brilliant strategy and it’s working because it plays right into the racism that flows under the surface of polite American discourse. And Trump Bonus, black people can hate brown people now! You guys aren’t the rapists this time!

At the start of the summer, I thought Trump’s candidacy was a joke. In 2000, I thought bumbling coke head George W. Bush could never be elected and look what happened to the country when he did. Trump is a fascist demagogue. The hate mail I got after my last Trump post put me in fear because I dared to say the emperors clothes were white robes and red armbands. For may Latina daughter, I’m not going to assume that Trump and his rabid, fact-hating minions are going away. I think we are in for a big fight for the brain of America.

TRUMP Part 3 – Kiss My Anchor Baby!

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture 2: Ain’t I a Black Girl?

June 16, 2015June 17, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 6 Comments

June 16, 2016

Suddenly, there is lot of discussion about the social construction of race in the mainstream media. We can thank Rachel Dolezal for that. She’s the “white” woman who has posing as the “black” head of the Spokane NAACP and was recently outed by her parents as a honky. I put white and black in quotation marks because once you realize how much of our reality is socially constructed, you will quickly use up your quotation mark quota. Queer theorists don’t talk about men and women, only “men” and “women.”

Everybody has an opinion about it. Conservatives want to know why she is a villain while Caitlyn Jenner is a hero. (For starters, Jenner never misrepresented who her parents were or took a scholarship for women.) Those folks don’t understand how race and gender are both socially constructed, but they are constructed very differently. Feminists have chimed in as well. I’ve been following Naomi Wolf’s Facebook insightful posts about the complexity of cultural identity.

I got a call from a a friend wondering where my voice has been on this matter. Why would I be silent about something that is firmly in my wheelhouse? Well, that’s because I’ve been observing the very public conversation. I can see merit on the roughly 20 positions on the matter, including some of the Conservatives who are flummoxed at the Dolenzal/Jenner nexus. This week I was going to write a bit about Cozy’s gender performance (which, as you might guess in this house, is not very “girly.” (See, there’s those quotation marks again.)) I did a brief interview with KGW-TV on the topic yesterday. So I thought I’d expound on my comments here.

Sociology expert: Dolezal case is ‘condescending‘

First of all, if you didn’t know, race doesn’t exist. There are no people who are the color white or black. That would be weird. We’re all just varying shades of flesh color from different places. What race are people from Afghanistan? At the dawn of the colonial era in the 16th Century, Europeans decided they were “white” (because, you know, heaven is very white) and Africans were “black” (the color of evil and heavy metal t-shirts) so they could enslave the evil blacks. And this over-simple social construction of reality has been accepted ever since. These are the same people who told us the sun, planets, and stars revolved around the Earth.

The only truth is that you inherit physical characteristics from your biological parents. The rest is made up bullshit by people on a power trip. When the human genome was finally mapped in 2001, they found more genetic diversity WITHIN so-called races than between them. A lot of white people have some black ancestors and even more black folks have a white lineage. It’s all made up. Is Barrack Obama white or black? Flip a coin and you’re right.

That’s Point Number 1 – race is a bullshit made-up idea. Point Number 2 is that bullshit made-up idea has real world consequences. For example, slavery. Or institutional discrimination. Or being shot by the cops. Or being called a thug by Fox News. Or being told that the whiter you are, the prettier you are. And on and on to the break of dawn. You don’t actually have to worry about what Jesus/Allah/Vishnu thinks of you, but you certainly have to deal with the people who do.

But Point 3 is that while race is defined for us by society, it also can be defined by us. If you don’t believe me, next St. Patrick’s Day, see how may non-Irish people claim to be Irish. I claim to be Czech but that’s just my father’s father’s father, Michael Blazak, who emigrated from Prague in 1891. For a while, I thought I was Mohican because my father’s mother had a Mohican ancestor. As a boy, I incorporated that into my self-identity. I loved heights because I was part Indian! Then my grandmother found out she was adopted. Psych!

White people have romanticized black culture for a good century. African-Americans are more sensual, mystical, soulful and sexual we are told. Just read Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, where he yearns to be as “free as the negro.” Or Lou Reed sing “I wanna be black. Have natural rhythm, shoot a hundred feet of jism, too!” In 1990, I went to go see Public Enemy perform at the Omni in Atlanta with Malcolm X identity patch around my neck. I got called “cracker” by the actual black kids. Repeatedly. It was just a version of what Justin Bieber and Iggy Azalea are doing now.

This is cultural appropriation. Justin and I can put on our black face and act out the latest version of Birth of a Nation, and then scrub it off and go back to the protection afforded by our white privilege. People of color cannot do that. Sure, there is a long history of black people “passing” as white. (Check out the 1934 film Imitation of Life. Wow.) But the punishment of being outed is a lot more severe than what’s now happening to Rachel Dolezal. Often it was death by the noose.

There is also the issue that as a “light-skinned black woman,” she will be valued in a racist patriarchy in a way that a dark-skinned black woman who doesn’t have European features won’t. The bell hooks (fan) Facebook page asked, “Why waste time being at the bottom of a lengthy hierarchy of white women, when you can be fast tracked to the top of the hierarchy of ‪black women?”

So there are two things to say about Rachel Dolezal. Which one I put first may cause you to determine whether I support her or am somehow offended by her choices. I’d put them side by side, but I’m not that sophisticated a blogger, so.

POINT A – She lied. She lied about who her father was. She got a scholarship to Howard University (the “black Harvard”) that should have gone to an actual person of color. She’s guilty of cultural theft. At the end of the day, she can go back to her white parents in the suburbs and enjoy all the deep, deep perks that insures, and talk about back in the day when she snuck into the black clubhouse.

POINT 1 – Rachel Dolezal is a person committed to human rights. She could have used her whiteness to make mad stacks on Wall Street. But, like Twain’s Prince and the Pauper, chose to abandon her whiteness to walk a few thousand mile in the shoes of the (still) oppressed. People who know her testify to her commitment to issues of social justice and racial equality and who cares if she did it in a weave and ton of bronzer on her face.

Just to loop this back to gender (I’m still going to write that piece on Cozy’s gender performativity), there is a big difference between transsexual and transracial. Transgender people feel they are born in the wrong sexed body. I have a friend in NYC who having his breasts removed this summer so he can feel closer to the male body he always felt he was. We are both biologically male and female in utero. Then something happens in the process and our little bodies divide into male or female (and a lot of inter-sexed kids as well). Nobody, even Rachel, is “white” in the womb but comes out “black.” Transracial is a choice. Transgender is not.

But I’m glad this whole thing has sparked this conversation. Dolezal has resigned her position at the small chapter of the NAACP she voluntarily held and I can post the link to this blog on anybody’s Facebook page who wants to know what I think about this week’s scuttlebutt. Everybody wins!

Gender: Nature vs. Nurture: Round 1

The following books are mentioned in this blog and are available at Powell’s Books by clicking on the covers below:

“Oh, I Get It” Moment #1: B.B. King and the lady in the purple hat

May 12, 2015May 13, 2015 ~ Randy Blazak ~ 7 Comments

May 12, 2015

The sad news about the fading health of blues great B.B. King has got me reflecting on one of those moments in life when you have a clear opportunity to leave stupidity behind. This blogpost could be titled, “How B.B. King got me to stop being a racist.”

Almost anyone who hears me speak will know I grew up in Stone Mountain, Georgia. Stone Mountain has the distinction of getting a shout out in MLK’s 1963 “I Have a Dream” speech, the greatest speech in American history. “Let freedom from Stone Mountain in Georgia.” It still gives me chills. My town got that distinction from Dr. King because it is the birthplace of the modern Ku Klux Klan. My northern family displayed a gentler version of white southern attitudes. My dad would voice concern about property values if “they” moved into the neighborhood. My mom would lock the car doors if we drove through a black neighborhood. So I grew up in a racist family, in a racist town, in a racist state, in a racist country. It impacted me.

I was raised to be afraid of black people. But none of my experiences matched those lessons. I played YMCA basketball and the black kids were as competitive and nice as the white kids. In high school, I had three quarters in Mr. Krantz’ Folk Guitar class. By the end my best friend in the class was an African-American girl named Sharon Squires. I talked to her about The Beatles and punk rock, she talked to me about dub reggae and the very first hip hop records. Our language of music broke through the barrier of race. It didn’t jive with some of the racist things that came out of my mouth.

In high school, I knew kids whose fathers were in the Klan. I watched the KKK march on more than one Labor Day in my town. In my journalism class, I wrote an editorial titled, “If they can have Black History Month, why can’t we have White History Month?” I needed an escape route from racism. It would be music.

At the tender age of 16, I got a dream job at a record store. It was Turtles Records and Tapes on Memorial Drive. I basically pestered the employees in the Stone Mountain store until they hired me and became the youngest employee in the entire chain. “The Baby Turtle,” as Bono later dubbed me after a U2 show at the Agora. Getting that job was like going to music college. Jimmy, Eric, Nan, Jeff, David and the rest of the gang infused my education with a racial theme.

“Randy, do you like jazz?”

“Yeah, I love Dave Brubeck!” They would put on a John Coltrane record and blow my mind.

“Randy, do you like reggae?”

“Yeah, I love The Police!” They would put on a Peter Tosh record and blow my mind.

“Randy, do you like the blues?”

“Yeah, I love Eric Clapton!” They would put on a Buddy Guy record and blow my mind.

It was clear that my musical upbringing had been squeezed through a white bread filter. I had known it intellectually – Elvis sang Little Richard, The Beatles sang Motown – but I hadn’t experienced it viscerally. Watching David Remy’s face scrunch up when he slapped on Son Seals Live & Burning or Coltrane’s A Love Supreme took me to the core of what the music is about – soul. African-American girls would come into the store, giggle and asked me if I was prejudiced. When I said, “No,” we’d have great talks about Kurtis Blow or Millie James. I was in.

But I still had the fear to contend with. In 1981, the Turtles gang got a batch of primo tickets to see B.B. King with Bobbie Blue Bland and Clarence Carter at the Atlanta Civic Center. If you know the P. Funk song, you know that Atlanta is a “chocolate city.” A blues concert downtown meant this white kid would be a serious minority. What would happen? Would they try to murder me? Or worse, would they blame me for racism? I had black records now! Southern whites loved to blather about “reverse racism,” so I feared the worse.

Our little Caucasian group walked into a sea of black faces and I could feel my heartbeat race. But when we got to our seats, something funny happened. All those black faces smiled at me. A heavy-set woman next to me in a huge purple hat put her arm around me and said, “Sonny, you are going to have a great night. You need to loosen up.” Later, when Clarence Carter played “Patches,” she held my hand and cried. I had the greatest night.

That night I got it. I got the loss that comes from being a racist and I let it go. When B.B. King came out to his anthem, “Everyday I Have the Blues,” I got that, too. Where that comes from. His blues. And his permission to let a white boy from a Klan town experience the release of that pain with him. In that one evening, it all made so much sense to me. The stupid waste of racism. The loss of basic connections between human beings. At that point I decide to do something about it and that became the foundation of my career as a sociologist.

Someone once compared racism to alcoholism. An alcoholic can go for twenty years without a drink, but they still refer to themselves as an alcoholic. I never say I’m not racist. I learned racism at an early age and it exists inside me. I am a racist. But I am also a committed anti-racist, working to undue my white privilege and the systemic institutional racism that supports it. And I owe that position to a bunch of record store employees and a big lady in a purple hat at B.B. King concert. Feminist scholar bell hooks once defined feminism as “a movement to end sexism, sexist exploitation, and oppression.” That night I started moving.

Next: How The Ellen James Society freed me from homophobia.

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