He’s writing a blog about planning a mass murder. At that point, he’s obviously past sugarcoating, qualifying, or speaking in code. He has no reason to hide the fact that he’s racist behind a veil of irony. The entire nine-month blog reads as literal and sincere. I don’t see why we should single out the one passage dealing with race as ironic.

Also, I think him saying, “Good luck to Obama! He will be successful.” separates him from the white supremacists in that article who were hoping for Obama’s failure to reinforce their view of black inferiority. Again, unless you read that as sarcasm.

I don’t know. Like I said, it’s not really worth debating whether this guy was a racist. I just think we need to pick and choose our battles better than this.

It is comforting for us to think of white supremacy and racism as always and only “i hate niggers.” But : “A white supremacist would not applaud black men for sexing white women or say that it’s well-deserved payback for centuries of white-instituted oppression” In a popular understanding of white supremacy, this is true.

There was an article about how white supremacists were supportive of Obama because they couldn’t think of anything better to prove their view of black inferiority was to give the keys to the kingdom to a black guy and let him run the kingdom into the ground. That’s how mutable white supremacy is. I read that quote in his stuff as ironic.

In my view, while it doesn’t win us friends to call racism and white supremacy what it is when we see it, we still gotta do it. Our own fatigue with its resurgence shouldn’t make us less vigilant.

Yeah, I saw TNC’s post today. I agree, ascribing race to these types of things is complex and complicated. I think a person can be racist, but then do things that have nothing to do with that racism, as I illustrated (clumsily) in that Ben Roethlisberger example.

Some of these rabid health care protesters are probably racist. But that doesn’t mean their anger at and fear of health care reform is necessarily rooted in racism. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that humans are tribal, and their tribe is currently losing. So they listen to talk radio and Fox News, looking for someone to tell them who the enemy is and what battle needs to be fought. The insurance lobby whips up conservative politicians, who whip up the conservative media, who whip up the base into a frenzy. And the same thing would have happened if Clinton or Edwards had been elected. For the protesters who happen to be racist, racism is probably contributing to (but not causing) their anger. But of course, there are a few– always– who are just out there to oppose everything the colored president does.

Likewise, Sodini may have been racist. Like I said, there’s scant evidence of it, but I don’t know. But for the sake of argument, let’s say he was. Then the question is: If a racist white man commits a violent act of misogyny, is it because he’s racist? Does race necessarily have to be a contributing factor in it? Did Martin Luther King win a Nobel Peace Prize because he was an adulterer? Did his adultery contribute to him becoming a great world leader?

Bottom line: Can a person be two things separately and simultaneously without those things being in any way connected? I think so.

http://ta-nehisicoates.theatlantic.com/archives/2009/08/the_tough_thing_about_racism.php

You are thinking of it in the I HATE NIGGERS mold and not in the general sense of an ideology that privileges whiteness in all forms (indeed, whiteness IS humanity) and non-whiteness is denigrated in all forms.

That’s what’s happening here.

True – this guy may not be a white supremacist in the same mold as the guy who shot up the Holocaust museum, but that’s only one kind of white supremacy. That ole boy’s is more benign and subtle, in its own way, is worse.

To label him a white supremacist, based on what we’ve seen so far, is ridiculous. To say that he belongs in the same racially-motivated category as the Holocaust Museum shooter is equally ridiculous. And to use this tragedy as one to talk about race is actually counterproductive, in my opinion.

It’s like, Ben Roethlisberger (and I’m just using any name here) could be a virulent racist in private. But nothing he’s done publicly would lead us to that conclusion. More importantly, whether he’s privately a racist or not has nothing to do with his game-winning TD drive in Super Bowl 43. Did some potentially deep-seated, hidden racism motivate him to move his team down the field? Is that even worth discussing? No. So regardless of the fact that all the dots are connected, using that game-winning drive as a means to talk about race in America would be ridiculous and counterproductive. Just like, I believe, using the gym shooting as a means to talk about race is equally ridiculous and counterproductive. The analogy isn’t perfect, but… Does that make any sense or did I go too far off the rails?

That’s the insidiousness of racism – often what white people like about us is used to reduce us to…just what they like about us.

I don’t think any of the bloggers you cite are wrong, even if they have a political agenda.

We would do well to listen to any voices that are connecting the dots between all the racist stuff going on in our country right now. It’s is connected. Racism works precisely because everyone thinks any one instance is unconnected to any other instance. Even though it is.