Double standards

Courtland Milloy posed an interesting question in today’s Washington Post… What would the response of government and citizenry have been if the armed militia movement we’re seeing spread across America had been almost exclusively black, instead of white? Here’s a clip:

Imagine that the inauguration of President George W. Bush had sparked an explosive rise in African American militia groups. Suppose thousands of heavily armed black men began gathering at training camps in wooded areas throughout the country, devising military tactics for “taking back their country” after what they believed was an electoral coup.

…”If the people we saw running around armed to the teeth were black, I think their organizations would be destroyed in a matter of hours,” Mark Potok, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, told me. “If people saw on their TV screens photos of black militia members shooting at images of a white president, I don’t think they would last”…

I’m curious to know what you think… Judging solely from Glenn Beck’s relatively recent hysteria upon seeing a black dance troupe train in a military-like fashion, I’m likely to agree with Milloy.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of double standards, how about the fact that our government compelled BP put $20 billion in escrow to cover the damages resulting from their Deepwater Horizon catastrophe, but has still to do anything significant about the Bhopal disaster, which left over 15,000 dead in India in 1984?

And, speaking of the BP mess in the Gulf, did you happen to hear that Martin Feldman, the judge who yesterday ruled against the Obama administration’s temporary ban on off-shore drilling, owns a considerable amount of stock in companies like Transocean and Halliburton, that are directly tied this disaster?

Good work, America.

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19 Comments

  1. Posted June 24, 2010 at 4:19 am | Permalink

    Mark, you failed to observe the key difference between the Bhopal disaster and the Deepwater Horizon disaster. Bhopal killed a whole bunch of poor people with dark skin. Deepwater Horizon made our pretty beaches all oily. Isn’t it obvious which one the government should “do something about”?

  2. Knox
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 6:22 am | Permalink

    I’m sure someone will chime in here saying that there is a black member of the Michigan militia.

  3. Kim
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 7:02 am | Permalink

    If only the people of Bhopal had been oil covered shrimp, or flaming sea turtles.

  4. Kristin
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 7:42 am | Permalink

    Isn’t the difference that Bhopal is not in America? Isn’t that up to the government of the sit of the tragedy?

  5. Peter Larson
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 8:36 am | Permalink

    Didn’t some black armed Islamic group in Detroit have their leader killed in the past year?

  6. Brackinald Achery
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 9:35 am | Permalink

    This just in — everyone who disagrees with you is a racist.

    I’m psyched when anybody keeps and bears arms. It’s a sign of responsibility and self-respect. The only person bringing up the illusion of race in this regard is you.

  7. Edward
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 10:16 am | Permalink

    Do you really believe the crap you say, BA?

  8. Posted June 24, 2010 at 10:38 am | Permalink

    You’re right, Obama should have done something about Union Carbide building a shoddy plant halfway around the world in 1969, when he was 8 years old and living in Jakarta. And since Obama was fresh out of college (BA, Columbia) and working as a community organizer at City College in Harlem for NY PIRG for a little under $10,000/yr in 1984, he obviously should have done something about it then. And it’s his fault that the Indian government downgraded charges in 1996, when he was a part-time lecturer at the University of Chicago and running for the Illinois state senate. And when he was elected President of the US 24 years after the disaster, doing something significant about it should have been near the top of his priorities, way above the soaring unemployment rate, rising home foreclosures, tens of millions of Americans without access to health care, and two wars.

  9. Posted June 24, 2010 at 10:41 am | Permalink

    That’s funny you mentioned the dance troupe – as soon as started reading the headline for this post, that’s the first thing I thought of. I think it’s pretty obvious that certain branches of the 24 hour news cycle would (and already have) gone bat-shit-crazy at even the “talk” of armed marches or militias that were not 98% angry white people who have a tendency to own confederate themed license plates.

  10. Brackinald Achery
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 12:48 pm | Permalink

    How did I misspeak, Edward? I got into the militia movement during Bush’s term. Most people I’ve met in it don’t think about race at all; you guys are the one’s obsessing about it. Smeller’s the feller, as they say. I guess that’s what happens when your worldview is shaped primarily by political propaganda rather than first-hand experience. Happens to everybody.

  11. Dirtgrain
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 2:43 pm | Permalink

    Everybody should join a militia, out of self respect–then we could put an end to this petty bickering.

    Seriously, I have seen objections in the past, from right wingers, about purported Obama election scandals involving Black Panthers. And Bill Ayers’ connection to Obama has been criticized (and used as political fuel). Might the Weather Underground be characterized as a militia-like organization? I’m not making any certain claims here, but it seems there are examples of right, left, Black, and White militias already.

    I don’t see widespread acceptance of militias, regardless of their backgrounds. But I can see that a Black militia, like the one in the example, would have more mainstream opposition. Would you refute that, BA?

  12. X23
    Posted June 24, 2010 at 3:30 pm | Permalink

    If you honestly believe that we Americans would accept a large group of black men conducting military training in the woods, stocking up ammunition, shooting targets of our leaders, and talking about revolution, you are out of your mind. That shit would be shut down faster than a commode at Chaz Bono’s house.

  13. Edward
    Posted June 25, 2010 at 8:48 am | Permalink

    I take you at your word, BA, when you say that you aren’t a racist. I think that’s great. But, if you’re suggesting that people around this country would sit by as armed black men attended Bush rallies, you’re off your nut.

  14. Brackinald Achery
    Posted July 3, 2010 at 4:10 pm | Permalink

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/29/AR2010062905329.html

  15. Brackinald Achery
    Posted July 3, 2010 at 4:17 pm | Permalink

    No Guns For Negros (Part I)

    Part II

  16. Brackinald Achery
    Posted July 4, 2010 at 11:59 am | Permalink

    “We hold that there is but one race, that being the human one, and that there is but one condition toward which it should strive, that being one of freedom.”

    — Lee Miracle of the Michigan Militia

  17. Kim
    Posted July 6, 2010 at 9:33 am | Permalink

    Yes, Clarence Thomas truly is the MLK of our time.

  18. Brackinald Achery
    Posted July 7, 2010 at 8:42 am | Permalink

    Jealous.

  19. dragon
    Posted July 8, 2010 at 12:07 am | Permalink

    “No American wants to be told what to drive, where to seek medical help, how warm they can keep their house, or even how effectively their toilets are allowed to flush. No American wants to be told that he cannot own the most effective means of protecting his or her own life, or the lives of his family. No American wants to be told that he must work longer hours to pay more and more of his check to support an overbloated government bureaucracy.”

    -– Lee Miracle of the Michigan Militia

    1)They took my truck and all I got was this shitty Obamamobile.
    2) Doctor? I wish.
    3)Heil thermostat!
    4)Do they make low flow toilets in full camo?
    5)really? no grenade launchers. Fucking commies.
    6)that’s what you get with 20 of 28 years of republicans.

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