Example 5,459,738
Consider the section of the Texas Constitution of 1836 below, currently doing the rounds as an example of the foundational racism in the Good Old Days.
Sec. 10. All persons (Africans, the descendants of Africans, and Indians excepted,) who were residing in Texas on the day of the declaration of independence, shall be considered citizens of the republic, and entitled to all the privileges of such. All citizens now living in Texas, who have not received their portion of land, in like manner as colonists, shall be entitled to their land in the following proportion and manner : Every head of a family shall be entitled to one league and labor of land;
[definition from somewhere on the web] A league of land equals 4,428 acres and a labor, 177 acres, combined they add up to 4,605 acres [19 km²]. This was the. amount of a headright (first-class) granted to “all persons except Africans and their descendants, and Indians, living in Texas.” (Convertunits.com, however, says one square league is 7628 acres.)
Either way, that’s a nontrivial homestead. And it’ll obviously set you back if it’s not handed to you and you have to scrape up the cash to buy all that by yourself. Racism, indeed.
Notice anyone missing from that list? So excluded they didn’t even need to be mentioned by name? Notice anyone missing from the current discussion about that list? Unlike “Africans and Indians”, those people are still unseen.
At the rate we’re going, it’s going to be centuries before we understand why disasters keep crashing in on us (You’d like an example? Trump.) from the blind side.
Reporting on a state level iteration of this puzzling world-wide fractal:
NC elected Mark Robinson, a far right African American GOPer as Lt. Governor. Right wing journalists are all “Nyah nyah, what about THIS guy? Where’s that GOP racism now?”
A longtime progressive blog BlueNC.com, had this to say about that:
Who can ever figure out this mysterious pattern that repeats itself from governments, corporations and national media down to the smallest household unit? It must forever remain a mystery. /s
Earlynerd on June 18th, 2021 at 17:43
Triple yes. Same thing playing out in the NY mayor’s race. Gee whiz, the people who put Adams first are willing to put Yang second (both men, different politics). Those who put Garcia or Wiley first, both women, different politics, put the other one second. Commentators comment how it’s hard to figure out which policies voters are after.
Yeah. Massive headscratcher.
Did you ever see that Simpsons episode where the company is trying to get the workers to dump their dental plan, so they offer anyone who’ll sign it away a free beer in the parking lot. The parking lot is jammed with people lined up for free beer. The whole time he’s standing in line, Homer has a little voice going in his head. “Lisa needs braces. Dental plan!” But it doesn’t register. Because free beer.
(It’s a story, so eventually it registers. Unlike the situation we’re talking about.)
quixote on June 18th, 2021 at 21:55
Yep, it’s pretty much at that subconscious level. Too bad it may cost NY a good mayor who might actually be able to deal effectively with the police unions.
Right now the battle is raging over the (all male, supposedly virgin) U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops defying their (also male, also supposedly virgin) supreme leader in denying the (gasp – MARRIED! AN ACTUAL REAL FATHER!) President of the United States communion because he supports the rights of the majority of Americans to physical integrity.
Not one tweet, not one commentator, not one news story has even mentioned this bedrock violation of democracy – the exclusion of women from any voice in their own government and in the disposal of their own lives and bodies.
Any awareness of that is definitely at “free beer” level.
Earlynerd on June 19th, 2021 at 00:41
Just to clarify, although I’m sure you got that, Q – the whole women being subject to the laws of a non-representative government thing:
Women, and no other demographic or group, are specifically forbidden from becoming priests. Only men may become priests, who become bishops, who become cardinals, one of whom becomes Pope. Only these men write and administer Catholic laws.
There hasn’t been anything like this for any other demographic since before 1866. Not where one group of people has been physically bound by laws made by a ruling body that specifically excludes them. Even after the 19th amendment (where is even one national holiday for that red-letter day?) finally allowed women just the basic right of voting in a democracy, exclusively male ruled religions still have this unjust right over us.
Most people don’t make that connection, but for the media to keep whitewashing and erasing it is unforgivable.
Earlynerd on June 19th, 2021 at 23:32
Example 5,459,739:
“Indiana woman will be 1st person sentenced in Jan. 6 US Capitol riot”
https://www.wrtv.com/news/local-news/crime/indiana-woman-will-be-1st-person-sentenced-in-jan-6-us-capitol-riot
Another thing I’ve been shouting to deaf ears for decades now:
it wouldn’t even take special legislation, at least after the 1960’s for black men and the 1970’s for all women. Just enforce the damn law as written.
One more woman will undergo the full force of written law, while men everywhere breathe a sigh of relief.
This kind of women’s law vs. men’s law will continue to grant men overt, unmistakable access to their own tier of rights.
If American courts and American law enforcement only enforced laws like self defense (avg. sentence for male murdering any female for no reason at all: 7 years [she died, there are no more years for her] vs. avg sentence for any woman killing any man even in most common situation, self defense: life in prison), equal employment, juvenile justice (girls are tried for murder when only tangentially associated with the actual murderer, they are also tried more often and at younger ages for adult crimes), civil rights, physical autonomy – if courts only enforced those laws the same for women and girls as for men and boys, women would have the vanishingly small lack of justice the whole sexist “Karen” made false reality for the majority of women and girls in the U.S.
But the courts don’t enforce those laws and we don’t have those rights.
(and just as an intersectional note on all that one-way intersectionality: simply enforcing the laws as written, in good faith, guaranteeing every bit as much financial force for the victims as for the perps, and without all the other escapes given to money and caste, would work just as well for non-white victims as it would for non-males)
Earlynerd on June 22nd, 2021 at 22:45
BTW, am I the only one rereading “The Last Flight of Doctor Ain” these days?
Just curious.
Earlynerd on June 22nd, 2021 at 23:34
I’m loving seeing the Roderick Spode of SSA commissioners get his comeuppance.
If he insists on holding out, I wonder if Biden’s next step might be something like whispering “Eulalie Soeurs” to him? But then Saul’s already been somewhat outed, so that may not work.
In news re: the other half of the human race, I wonder if anyone’s read “Winter in Kabul” by Ann Jones? It gives a (trying to find a non-hackneyed term here and failing) harrowing report on just how America’s tepid “pro-democracy” intervention actually worked out there for the rightless half of humanity during Obama The Conciliator’s reign.
It will be horrifying worse now, but soon erased, as were women’s despair, suicides and state ordered murders before a Republican media ginned up a convenient and short lived outrage in the U.S.
It isn’t even ironic that before the U.S. became involved, women in both Iraq and Afghanistan had actual 21th century human rights. In Afghanistan, it was actually courtesy of the Soviet Union. We were doctors, lawyers, university professors there, we walked the steets freely, we wore what clothing we chose, we sent our daughters to school.
It was the U.S. allying itself with a primitive religion that had not advanced in a millenia or so that did in women in both countries. As with the U.S., the multi-ton anchor dragging all rights backwards is the denial of women’s equality, women’s legal, civil and human rights. As a woman, I’m content to see the rest go under, that stood and watched us drown.
Earlynerd on July 9th, 2021 at 23:21
I’ll have to look up “The Last Flight of Dr. Ain.” Intriguing title.
The news out of Afghanistan doesn’t bear reading, let alone living it.
I’m not so sure about watching everything go under. I’ve been seeing it coming since forever. And yet, now that the whole schmear is starting to fall over, what I hadn’t realized was how bad it would feel. Even though I knew it was coming. Weird. Failure of the imagination, I guess.
quixote on July 17th, 2021 at 23:34
It’s one of Tiptree’s best. “Houston, Houston” but for the whole human race.
An ixquick “-amazon” search shows it published in “Her Smoke Rose Up Forever” (which I do have in storage, but unpacked and inaccessible since this third time my life was cratered for no legal reason on earth)
Just tried to look up the site I’d downloaded it from two or three years ago and it seems she’s been erased from Project Gutenberg. Not just this short story is gone, she is.
Tillie Olsen’s “Silences” might be a good one to read instead, if “Last Flight” is unobtainable.
[PLEASE NOTE: that is a “minus amazon”, not anything else. It’s how I’ve done every search since that book burglar first appeared on the horizon]
Earlynerd on July 27th, 2021 at 22:23
Also have to note that you’re probably among the minority of Americans who know what a reverse-mirror-image America’s part in women’s lives was in Afghanistan, as well as Iraq.
You probably know that returning Soviet Afghan soldiers met with a completely surreal erasue in the USSR of their wartime experience in that once and future backward country. But the Soviet Union did, for reasons I never cared much about then and could not conceive of caring about now, elevate the female half of humanity from farm animals to human status. All that matters is that they did.
Women there being human and not farm animals are gonig to suffer so horribly, for the second time in as many generations, from being forced back into the absolute control of men.
I can’t say how much I regret not having left this country in the early 1990’s when I had that choice.
Earlynerd on July 27th, 2021 at 22:44
Anything by Tiptree is worth reading.
As for Marxism and the status of women, declaring us equal was part of rejecting the Old Order. (The French revolutionaries did that, too.) In practice, it was an interesting sort of equality which was extended to women who turned themselves into their stereotype of men, who made sure that their biology never inconvenienced anyone, and who still made the sandwiches.
It’s a step up from lower status than eggplants, but it had a looooooooong way to go. It’s also a step up from “pet rocks,” as that US general called women.
I can’t even read the news out of Afghanistan at this point.
quixote on July 28th, 2021 at 10:02
All those women who were in reality the heads of their families — all so invisible.
NW Luna on November 22nd, 2021 at 13:15
Yeah, Luna. Totally erased.
I too-vividly remember when I was a teenager people taking women’s relative poverty — always having the least money, whichever class they were in — as evidence of their lack of ability. And that grating sense of No! You’re wrong!, but being too young and inarticulate to figure out why.
Then you find out we were, and are, robbed. And the robberies are buried under layers of lies. And then they blame us for them. Greatest running con of all time.
quixote on November 25th, 2021 at 10:44