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[Angelus Errare]

Didn't want this to get lost in the ever moving NFL thread since I thought it was worth people seeing.

a high-school journalist interviewing Louis Armstrong about an upcoming tour asked the musician about his thoughts on the situation, prompting Armstrong to refer to the Arkansas governor as several varieties of “motherfucker.” (In the interest of finding a printable quote, his label for Faubus was changed to “ignorant plowboy.”) Armstrong, who was scheduled to perform in the Soviet Union as a cultural ambassador on behalf of the State Department, cancelled the tour—a display of dissent that earned him the scorn and contempt of legions of whites, shocked by the trumpeter’s apparent lack of patriotism. As the historian Penny Von Eschen notes in “Satchmo Blows Up the World,” a history of the American usage of black culture as a tool of the Cold War, students at the University of Arkansas accused Armstrong of “creating an issue where there was none,” and joined the procession of groups cancelling Armstrong’s scheduled concerts.

the President, like a truculent six-year-old, disinvited the Golden State Warriors from a White House visit, illustrates that the passage of six decades has not dimmed this dynamic confronted by Armstrong, or by any prominent black person tasked with the entertainment of millions of white ones.

Yet the belief endures, from Armstrong’s time and before, that visible, affluent African-American entertainers are obliged to adopt a pose of ceaseless gratitude—appreciation for the waiver that spared them the low status of so many others of their kind. Stevie Wonder began a performance in Central Park last night by taking a knee, prompting Congressman Joe Walsh to tweet that Wonder was “another ungrateful black multi-millionaire.” Ungrateful is the new uppity. Trump’s supporters, by a twenty-four-point margin, agree with the idea that most Americans have not got as much as they deserve—though they overwhelmingly withhold the right to that sentiment from African-Americans.

It’s impossible not to be struck by Trump’s selective patriotism. It drives him to curse at black football players but leaves him struggling to create false equivalence between Nazis and anti-Fascists in Charlottesville. It inspires a barely containable contempt for Muslims and immigrants but leaves him mute in the face of Russian election intervention. He cannot tolerate the dissent against literal flag-waving but screams indignation at the thought of removing monuments to the Confederacy, which attempted to revoke the authority symbolized by that same flag. He is the vector of the racial id of the class of Americans who sent death threats to Louis Armstrong, the people who necessitated the presence of a newly federalized National Guard to defend black students seeking to integrate a public school. He contains multitudes—all of them dangerously ignorant.

https://www.newyorker.com/news/news...trong-to-the-nfl-ungrateful-as-the-new-uppity

Just choice sections, the entire thing is worth a read.

 

[Dabanton]

Looking forward to reading this but yes, peep how many times 'Ungrateful' was used last week by trump supporters in reference to any black american who makes a lot of money who decides to tell us their opinion on things.

 

[Slayven]

Always been that way. Got to be eternally humble or you are an animal.

Look what happened to Richard Sherman a few years ago.

But Gronk out here wilding out like a motherfucker.

 

[Angelus Errare]

Always been that way. Got to be eternally humble or you are an animal.

Look what happened to Richard Sherman a few years ago.

But Gronk out here wilding out like a motherfucker.

Yup, shit was transparent as fuck.

 

[Lubricus]

From a very good article published yesterday, "Recalling Muhammad Ali’s Vietnam War Resistance in the Age of Trump",

Hardly. Ali was not prepared to give his life, or kill Vietnamese, on behalf of a society that barely valued his life or that of his fellow-black men and women. Or, as he put it, “Why should they ask me to put on a uniform and go ten thousand miles from home and drop bombs and bullets on brown people in Vietnam while so-called Negro people in Louisville are treated like dogs? . . . If I thought the war was going to bring freedom and equality to twenty-two million of my people, they wouldn’t have to draft me. I’d join tomorrow. But I either have to obey the laws of the land or the laws of Allah. I have nothing to lose by standing up for my beliefs. We’ve been in jail for four hundred years.”

https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/recalling-muhammad-alis-vietnam-war-resistance-in-the-age-of-trump

 

[pirateluigi]

Ungrateful terrifies me as a word because of all the connotations involved. It doesn't just take away agency from the black community (it pretty clearly implies that successful blacks are only successful because the white community allowed it) but it also carries an implicit threat that it can be taken away.

 

[Xe4]

The strange thing is rich black Americans are usually entitled to different privileges than many others, and were often criticized for not taking enough of a stance on civil rights issues. Louis Armstrong was the big example of this. Funny enough, whatever stances they did take, they were then criticized by an entirely different group of people.

You just can't win in that situation. May as well try to make a difference at that point.

 

[OrangeGrayBlue]

Great article. I shared it on fb yesterday. I think it does a great job of illustrating how the overt racism that some white folks think is part of some bygone era is actually still present today. It's just wearing a Groucho Marx disguise and parading around in public.