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somehow, this only surprises me because it happened somewhere--it seems an almost inevitable consequence of the convergence of the populist right's long trafficking in a sense of petit bourgeois victimization--the entire "reverse discrimination" thing in particular--and the fact that the whiff of racism floats everywhere around this campaign season like a noxious cologne---there's a sense in which this has already happened, or is everywhere anywhere about to happen. and because it seems everywhere anywhere about to happen, it is of course wholly shocking to everyone in any particular place where it actually does happen that it did happen, perhaps because it is everywhere already implied.
i read somewhere that a polling company had determined the factor of 7% of the american population--so 7% of any random-ish sample--could be chocked up to racism, controlled for with a filter which designates those responses to come from racism. that seems pollyanna. but on the other hand, it seems that it is far more a problem to be seen as a racist than it is to be one, so perhaps this is a measure of the success in concealment.
either way, a remarkably stupid action.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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