1. i point out that what i notice on rightnut radio and in rightnut forums is that they are no longer talking about liberating iraqis. instead, they are talking about how those iraqis clearly don't know what's in their best interest. their culture is such that they are subservient to saddam and actually prefer to live that way (whatever way these rightnutters imagine). so, they say, we've got to continue on, even if they die in the process. now that's a mild version. the really overtly racist folks will simply say, as one commentator on FOX: "look at 'em waving their guns. look at 'em jumping up and down, hoping to shoot a POW in the river. this is barbarism." etc.
2. i point this out because, i argue, the war rhetoric is taking a new turn, in my view: from operation liberation to operation bomb 'em back to bedrock.
3. y'all are responding as if somehow i object to iraqis fighting back?!
is this a debate technique or a genuine misunderstanding? just curious!
kelley
At 08:11 AM 3/26/03 -0600, Carrol Cox wrote:
>JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
> >
> >
> > Is this mostly how racism works--that they're discriminating
> against/locking
> > up/excluding/killing people for their own good? It manages to survive such
> > arguments, which is stunning. The primary thing that works is the
> objects of
> > racism saying 'Uh-uh, no more,' which is proof that the establishment line
> > about "helping" was a lie. One thing we have made some progress on in this
> > country is racism. Yeah, racism has worked for a longass time, but it's
> > nothing like it was, so we'll just keep kicking at it, right?
> >
>
>Yes. Overt racism, even in t he years before the breaking of Jim Crow,
>was never as important as the huge web of implict assumptions and
>expectations that virtually defined "american" life. I don't have a copy
>around this minute, but Toni Morrison wrote an important essay which
>focused on the presence of race in american literary works in which all
>the characters were white and no one ever mentioned race.
>
>Those implicit assumptions become visible in their cruder forms -- i.e.,
>no reasonably sophisticated person would call Iranians "uncivilized" as
>one of my students did during the Hostage crisis. But that sense of
>Arabs & Iranians as backward probably helped the sophisticates in the
>Defense Dept to underestimate the resistance they would encounter in
>Iraq. U.S. generals and aircraft engineers in the '40s couldn't -- just
>simply _couldn't_ see how good a fighter the Zero was. That cost a lot
>of American pilots their lives.
>
>Nothing in the '60s worked so well to break through racist assumptions
>as the riots in the cities: the response of many overt racists was "Hey
>-- those folks are serious." If the Iraq resistance is fierce enough it
>will tend towards having this effect.
>
>Carrol
>
> > Jenny Brown