quartknee's Comments

This is so offensive and I'm a principled Atheist! It's true that the burqa is not required by Islam, but to call this neurotic (only possible in advanced society) and "primitive" (only possible in regressive society) is in fact Islamophobic and most of all it's Euroscentric. God, where is this guy coming from? I love when reactionaries use liberal language because it really confuses people and that's sad. He just came out and said we're at war with Islam, which people rarely do. There's such a lack of understanding how bigotry works, so people just rephrase it and suddenly it doesn't exist.

That's nonsense. Just because some people are willing to make it clear that they have a bias doesn't mean that an "un"-biased view is possible. This fiction about "objective" journalism is just that fiction and it only serves the interests of the ruling institutions and individuals for them to make us believe that corporate infotainment is somehow a standard to aspire to. How The New York Times, CNN and all the major outlets are still considered legit when they all worked with the Pentagon to take us to war is beyond me. Stephen Colbert was unbearably right at the Correspondents' dinner, all they do is transcribe what gov't spokespeople tell them. They don't ask questions, they don't seek clarification and they don't check facts, all they do is amplify. There is no "purely" academic view. The academy is better informed than the media but no less given to ideological bias. We all know the fairy tale, that's why it takes a Howard Zinn to tell us the important stuff that was left out on purpose.

I think what some people fail to appreciate is Paul Mooney is NOT making any claims or points about ethnic or national origin. He's making points about race, which is a social construct. Lumping all Africans together and deciding they would all be Black similar to lumping most Europeans together as white are historical. Power relations, exploitation and the need for ideological justification are why this was done. He also says that people from the Carribbean, Cubans, Dominicans, Puerto Ricans, are also "niggas" because they were forced into speaking someone else's language and exploited by European colonists. When he draws parallels to Jesus and Cleopatra, he's of course applying a concept that didn't really exist as it does now then. People hated each other, but it was different. Now, however, an Arab and a Greek-Egyptian are seen as Black, as being outside of "real" civilization. Racial insecurity has little to do with it. Race is a social phenomenon, which has almost nothing to do with genes and almost everything to do with power and those who write the narratives.