Links vom Samstag, 12. November 2016

Ich bin im Kopf immer noch mit der US-Wahl beschäftigt.

Jamelle Bouie über Rassismus in den USA: White Won. Ich fand es sehr aufschlussreich zu lesen, dass auf jede rekonstruktive Phase ein Backlash folgte; so hatte ich die Jahre seit dem Bürgerkrieg Mitte des 19. Jahrhunderts noch gar nicht durchdacht. In diesem Zusammenhang empfehle ich mal wieder zwei Bücher, die sich mit der ersten Reconstruction bzw. der Zeit danach befassen: Eric Foners Reconstruction sowie Douglas A. Blackmons Slavery by another Name, beide hier im Blog besprochen. Zurück zum Artikel:

„More than anything, Trump promises a restoration of white authority. After eight years of a black president—after eight years in which cosmopolitan America asserted its power and its influence, eight years in which women leaned in and blacks declared that their lives mattered—millions of white Americans said enough. They had their fill of this world and wanted the old one back. And although it’s tempting to treat this as a function of some colorblind anti-elitism, that cannot explain the unity of white voters in this election. Trump didn’t just win working-class whites—he won the college-educated and the affluent. He even won young whites. Seventeen months after he announced his candidacy, millions of white Americans flocked to the ballot box to put Trump into the White House. And they did so as a white herrenvolk, racialized and radicalized by Trump. […]

Fifty years after the black freedom movement forced the United States to honor its ideals, at least on paper, it’s clear this was premature. Like clockwork, white Americans embraced a man who promised a kind of supremacy. We haven’t left our long cycle of progress and backlash. We are still the country that produced George Wallace. We are still the country that killed Emmett Till.“

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Ana Marie Cox im Gespräch mit Trevor Noah: Trevor Noah Wasn’t Expecting Liberal Hatred.

Im Interview mit dem New York Times Magazine von vor der Wahl geht es nur am Rande um die Rassenfrage, aber diesen Hinweis des gebürtigen Südafrikaners fand ich spannend:

„Q: Your memoir, “Born a Crime,” is a striking depiction of your life in South Africa both under and after apartheid. How has that experience formed your perspective on the divisions we’re seeing in America because of the election?

A: America is the place that always seems to treat the symptoms and not the cause. In South Africa, we’re very good at trying to go for the cause of racism. One thing that really never happened here, which is strange to me, was a period where white America had to reconcile with what it had done to black Americans.

Q: I wonder if one difference is that in South Africa, no one could deny that the root of it all was racism, whereas here, people think there’s more ambiguity.

A: What’s scary is how many people don’t realize that racism is written into your system in America. We had a very simple, blatant system. You could see where the tumor was, and you could cut it out. In America, the tumor masquerades as an organ, and you don’t know which parts to cut out because it’s hard to convince people that there’s a problem in the first place.“

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Aber immerhin gibt es die schönen Obama-and-Biden-Memes, die mir gerade den Tag retten. Hier sind 19 Totally Real Conversations Obama And Biden Have Had Since The Election.

November 12th, 2016