{"id":25623,"date":"2014-11-24T14:33:16","date_gmt":"2014-11-24T19:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/?p=25623"},"modified":"2014-11-24T14:33:16","modified_gmt":"2014-11-24T19:33:16","slug":"rudy-giuliani-discusses-his-black-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/11\/24\/rudy-giuliani-discusses-his-black-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Rudy Giuliani discusses his Black Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

Former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani this weekend helped to illustrate what I was getting at last week when I suggested that G.K. Chesterton\u2019s anti-Semitism has something to teach us<\/a> about racism and white supremacy here in 21st-century America.<\/p>\n

Chesterton wrote of what he called the \u201cJewish problem.\u201d The nature of that problem was simply that Jews exist. Chesterton viewed Jewish people as \u201cforeigners, only foreigners that were not called foreigners\u201d \u2014 meaning they were perpetual aliens whose allegiance, he was convinced, must always lie elsewhere. Therefore, for Chesterton, Jews could never be trusted \u2014 they must always be viewed with suspicion, as guilty unless proven innocent.<\/p>\n

This idea of a \u201cJewish problem\u201d became the lens through which Chesterton viewed any discussion Jewish people and their rights as citizens.\u00a0With that lens in place, Chesterton didn\u2019t need to deny the obvious reality of anti-Semitic prejudice or to deny that Jewish people, as a minority, often suffered from injustice. His \u201cJewish problem\u201d construct enabled him to reinterpret all evidence of such prejudice in a way that reinforced his own anti-Semitism and, in his view, justified such prejudice. If those untrustworthy Jews have been treated unjustly, then that\u2019s just more reason not to trust them \u2014 they\u2019ll want payback.<\/p>\n

Chesterton, then, could acknowledge Jewish suffering from injustice, but he regarded it as self-inflicted. Jewish people were to blame for anti-Semitism. Jewish people were to blame for anything bad that was done to<\/em> them.<\/p>\n

The \u201cproblem\u201d half of Chesterton\u2019s \u201cJewish problem\u201d construct was his way of acknowledging that such injustice existed, and even that it was regrettable. But this way of framing the \u201cproblem\u201d stunted\u00a0his otherwise brilliant intellect \u2014 restricting his ability to even think about any ways of solving this problem that didn\u2019t involve placing\u00a0all of the blame for it exclusively on the shoulders of the victims themselves. Thus even a brilliant man like Chesterton made himself stupid. He rendered himself incapable of recognizing the basic distinction between injustice done against<\/em> Jews and injustice done by<\/em> Jews.<\/p>\n

This same stunted, stupid-making framework is at work here in 21st-century America in much of our discussion about \u201crace.\u201d Every day, somewhere on your television and your radio dial you will find white people discussing race and racism as \u201cthe Black Problem.\u201d<\/p>\n

Which brings us to Rudy Giuliani<\/a>, a man as defiantly and proudly racist as Chesterton was defiantly and proudly anti-Semitic:<\/p>\n

\n

Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R) got into a heated argument about race and crime with Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson during a discussion on Ferguson, Mo.<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a>\u201cBut the fact is, I find it very disappointing that you\u2019re not discussing the fact that 93 percent of blacks in America are killed by other blacks. We\u2019re talking about the exception here,\u201d Giuliani said on NBC\u2019s Meet the Press<\/em> while discussing whether police forces reflect the demographics of the communities they serve.<\/p>\n

Dyson called this a \u201cfalse equivalency.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u201cCan I say this, first of all, black people who commit crimes against other black people go to jail. Number two, they are not sworn by the police department as a agent of the state to uphold the law,\u201d he said. \u201cSo in both cases, that\u2019s a false equivalency that the mayor has drawn, which is exacerbated tensions that are deeply imbedded in American culture.\u201d<\/p>\n

Later in the argument Giuliani argued that while police officers are only present in certain communities because black people are committing crimes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is the reason for the heavy police presence in the black community,\u201d he said. \u201cWhite police officers won\u2019t be there if you weren\u2019t killing each other 70 percent of the time.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

I cannot believe that Rudy Giuliani is as wholly ignorant as he pretends to be when he repeats this hogwash\u00a0about \u201cyou\u2019re not discussing\u201d black victims of black violence. I do not believe that it is possible that a man who served for years as the mayor of New York City is completely unaware of\u00a0the witness of the black church in New York.\u00a0This is a deliberate, brazen lie on Giuliani\u2019s part.<\/p>\n

It is a lie frequently told in America as part of what Ta-Nehisi Coates calls \u201cThe politics of changing the subject<\/a>\u201c:<\/p>\n

The notion that violence within the black community is \u201cbackground noise\u201d is not supported by\u00a0<\/span>the historical<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>record<\/a>\u2014<\/span>or<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>by<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>Google<\/a>. I have\u00a0<\/span>said this before<\/a>. It\u2019s almost as if\u00a0<\/span>Stop The Violence<\/a>\u00a0never happened, or\u00a0<\/span>The Interruptors<\/a><\/em>\u00a0never happened, or\u00a0<\/span>Kendrick Lamar<\/a>\u00a0never happened. The call\u00a0<\/span>issued by Erica Ford<\/a>\u00a0at the end of this\u00a0<\/span>Do The Right Thing<\/em>\u00a0retrospective is so common as to be ritual. It is not \u201cblack on black crime\u201d that is background noise in America, but the pleas of black people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Nothing Coates says there is new or news. And none of it is unknown to Rudy Giuliani. When Giuliani speaks as though he does not know all of this, he is simply lying.<\/p>\n

Giuliani is lying \u2014 and doubling down on those lies<\/a> \u2014 in service of the construct of \u201cThe Black Problem.\u201d That is the only frame Giuliani will allow for discussion of the injustices faced by black people in America. When an unarmed black person is killed by a white police officer \u2014 as happens here in the U.S. about once a week \u2014 Giuliani, like so many others, is desperate to force that slaying into the constricted framework of \u201cThe Black Problem.\u201d The blame for such unfortunate events must, somehow, be attributed to some intrinsic quality\u00a0of these perpetually suspect \u201cforeigners that are not called foreigners.\u201d<\/p>\n

The point here is not simply that what Giuliani is arguing is racist, but that he has accepted \u2014 and is promoting \u2014 a framework that doesn\u2019t allow for any thought or response that could ever be anything other than<\/em> racist. The framework of The Black Problem\u00a0allows for\u00a0different degrees of white supremacy and slightly different gradations of racism, but the construct redefines the subject in such a way that any non-racist response is prohibited. Any such response is, for people like Giuliani, unimaginable<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The point here is not simply that what Giuliani is arguing is racist, but that he has accepted a framework that doesn’t allow for any thought or response that could ever be anything other than racist. The framework of The Black Problem allows for different degrees of white supremacy and slightly different gradations of racism, but the construct redefines the subject in such a way that any non-racist response is prohibited. Any such response is, for people like Giuliani, unimaginable. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":141,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[158],"class_list":["post-25623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-warfare","tag-racism"],"yoast_head":"\nRudy Giuliani discusses his Black Problem<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"The point here is not simply that what Giuliani is arguing is racist, but that he has accepted a framework that doesn't allow for any thought or response that could ever be anything other than racist. The framework of The Black Problem allows for different degrees of white supremacy and slightly different gradations of racism, but the construct redefines the subject in such a way that any non-racist response is prohibited. Any such response is, for people like Giuliani, unimaginable.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/2014\/11\/24\/rudy-giuliani-discusses-his-black-problem\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Rudy Giuliani discusses his Black Problem\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The point here is not simply that what Giuliani is arguing is racist, but that he has accepted a framework that doesn't allow for any thought or response that could ever be anything other than racist. The framework of The Black Problem allows for different degrees of white supremacy and slightly different gradations of racism, but the construct redefines the subject in such a way that any non-racist response is prohibited. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Rudy Giuliani discusses his Black Problem","description":"The point here is not simply that what Giuliani is arguing is racist, but that he has accepted a framework that doesn't allow for any thought or response that could ever be anything other than racist. 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A former managing editor of Prism magazine, Fred worked in the parachurch nonprofit world for a decade and then for a decade in the newspaper biz. He began blogging in 2002. In 2003 he began writing a review of the best-selling Left Behind series. Eight years later he still hasn\u2019t finished reviewing the second book of that series and the experience has left him a broken shell of a man. Fred knows the difference between the possessive \u201cits\u201d and the contraction \u201cit\u2019s,\u201d and he is acutely bothered when others mistakenly confuse the two, yet he himself just kind of instinctively types the apostrophe whether or not it belongs there. Some feel this is his greatest hypocrisy, but those who know him better know better. He\u2019s guilty of much greater hypocrisies. Jesus loves Fred far more than Fred loves Jesus, but he at least has the decency to recognize the unfairness of that lopsided relationship and he has long wished that he were better at maybe kind of sort of doing something more to correct that some day. A Baptist, an amateur, a Gen-Xer, a Gemini and a Mets fan, Fred lives in Southeastern Pennsylvania with his wife and two teenage daughters. You can reach him via email at slacktivist at hotmail dot com.","url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/author\/fredclark1\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/141"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/slacktivist\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}