Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - Mosque planned to be built near Ground Zero

roachboy · 08-16-2010, 04:53 PM

there's a personal subtext to my entries here today in particular.
this racist horseshit is not abstract. it affects actual people. it affects how they live their lives every day. people who have done nothing to anyone at all but who happen to be muslim find themselves already feeling--o i dunno, whats the word---claustrophobic because the right has decided for purely mercenary reasons that it's ok to flirt with legitimating racism. people who are very close to me, whom i love alot, are already affected by the sense that we're at the start of **yet another** mounting wave of officially sanction racism directed at people who happen to be muslim, who happen to be arab by descent but who are, in every way, as american as any of the people whose predispositions are being channeled for political gain by the national conservative movement.

the main difference is that most of those people don't feel like there's a line being drawn around them for no reason that separates them from being who they are, separates them from where they've grown up, separates them from a sense of belonging in the united states. where they've fucking grown up. same as you.

so i think i need to check out of this thread for a while.

btw, as an aside: nothing i write is about individuals who happen to be conservative. i happen to think the tea party is a neo-fascist movement and that on technical grounds. but i also know people who are part of it and know that it is not one thing, that it is not even, not single. same goes for the conservative movement in general. the actions of national-level rightwing organizations that legitimate racism are calculations made for political gain for the organizations. the calculation is based on the idea that there are more people who would be drawn to these organizations by going this way than would be repulsed by the turn. but that presupposes that there's open-endedness, that there's movement and/or flux--which means that people do not think all one way. so yeah. just to be clear.

08-16-2010, 04:53 PM	#159 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	there's a personal subtext to my entries here today in particular. this racist horseshit is not abstract. it affects actual people. it affects how they live their lives every day. people who have done nothing to anyone at all but who happen to be muslim find themselves already feeling--o i dunno, whats the word---claustrophobic because the right has decided for purely mercenary reasons that it's ok to flirt with legitimating racism. people who are very close to me, whom i love alot, are already affected by the sense that we're at the start of yet another mounting wave of officially sanction racism directed at people who happen to be muslim, who happen to be arab by descent but who are, in every way, as american as any of the people whose predispositions are being channeled for political gain by the national conservative movement. the main difference is that most of those people don't feel like there's a line being drawn around them for no reason that separates them from being who they are, separates them from where they've grown up, separates them from a sense of belonging in the united states. where they've fucking grown up. same as you. so i think i need to check out of this thread for a while. btw, as an aside: nothing i write is about individuals who happen to be conservative. i happen to think the tea party is a neo-fascist movement and that on technical grounds. but i also know people who are part of it and know that it is not one thing, that it is not even, not single. same goes for the conservative movement in general. the actions of national-level rightwing organizations that legitimate racism are calculations made for political gain for the organizations. the calculation is based on the idea that there are more people who would be drawn to these organizations by going this way than would be repulsed by the turn. but that presupposes that there's open-endedness, that there's movement and/or flux--which means that people do not think all one way. so yeah. just to be clear. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 08-16-2010 at 05:02 PM..