First of all, where has Tim Wise been all my life? I can't get enough of this man's speeches. Even when I am not 100% in agreement with his theorical framework, the lucidity and simplicity of his exposition is an amazing breath of fresh air over a rather complex and sometimes stale discussions around race, class, privilege and empire. What I most enjoy is the "materiality" of his arguments; how he immerses every observation in historical facts and not emotional or ideological fiction.

Am going to come back to this particular speech for what he says about "state rights" because it will serve me as a jump-off point in another post about abortion rights, state rights and health care reform:

Fast forward to the civil war era. You have rich white folks in the south, where I come from, standing up and admitting that the reason they are willing to seceded from the union, and the only reason they ever articulated publicly ever, was to maintain and extend slavery and white supremacy. Not only where it already existed, but into the newly acquired, that is to say, stolen territories, from Mexico to the west.

Now we lie about it, and say it wasn’t about slavery, and say it was about states’ rights. Yes, the right of the states to keep and maintain slaves, exactly. But back then, they had no shame. So they didn’t try to cover it up. They openly said it. But once again, the rich didn’t want to go do the work, are you kidding? No. They are going to get poor people to go fight for them. And the poor folks didn’t even own slaves.

Now think, how do you get poor people who don’t even own the shirt on their back, let alone slaves, to go fight to go keep your slaves for you? You’ve got to convince them that their skin is more important than their economic interest. Because, think about it. If I am a farmer who has to charge you a dollar a day, or two dollars a week to work on your farm, and harvest that tobacco or pick that cotton, but you can get a black person to do it for free because you own them, whose going to get the job? Not me. In other words, slavery actually undermined the wages and the wage based the economic floor of the typical white working class, or low-income person. But they were told, “If these people are free, they are going to take your jobs.” No fool. They’ve got your job. That’s the point.

And so at some level, working class white people are being harmed by white privilege. Relatively being advantaged, right? Being given a leg up, being given a membership to the club, but in absolute terms, being kept economically subordinated by the very thing that gave then a sense of superiority. How’s that for irony?

I urge to go to MediaEd.org and read the whole speech this clip is based on and wich runs 40± pages long. It's at The Pathology Of Privilege (PDF) found in Tim Wise on White Privilege Racism, White Denial & the Costs of Inequality.

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When I found out California and Florida were state's #29 and #30 in the banning of same-sex marriage, I was aghast. Yet what really pissed me off was the fact that the Church of Latter Days Saints alone spent 20 million dollars in pushing for a ban on same-sex "marriage" in California.

Why the outrage? Because it proves my point about the anti-gay marriage laws : they are laws meant to use civil law to enforce a Christian Nationalist and Dominionist article of faith. The passing of Proposition 8 shows The Church's hand in legislating, crossing the constitutional line that is meant to separate Church and State.

It's not the only reason why I believe anti-gay marriage laws, including the Defense of Marriage Act, are anti-constitutional. I believe all marital rites performed by the state should be banned. The word "marriage" should be stricken out of the books and replaced with "civil union" and "marriage" and marital rites should be the domain of churches. For that matter, civil "marriages" should be replaced by civil unions that would not be able to discriminate based on sex, gender, ability or citizenship status as well have full "family rights" under domestic, family and inheritance law. You want a "marriage"? Then go to your church, temple, mosque or sinagogue to get one.

This takes me to the obvious question : Why in the world are gays fighting for marriage by the state if it is absolutely obvious that marriage is a religious construct?
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Actually, I have a rule : If you are Jewish, a woman and/or part of the melanin brigade, you cannot justify state rights in any way, shape or form. Sorry. Nope. Can't do.

You might as well go out, buy yourself a box cutter and start slicing yourself before you rationalize state rights. Why? Because they're synonymous to slavery, internment camps and husbandry privilege. Plain and simple.

Paul Krugman wrote today an piece on The New York Times where he says (obliquely, of course) that he agrees with me :
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Liberal Socialist agenda in the courts?

"Your philosophy is to follow the law."

This is really interesting. I would love to find out how many times he has said the idea of "common sense", "real world" but most importantly tradition, discipline, faithful to the law and read on that one, state law.

Again, the stress of rule of law is not about precedent. It's all about state rights.

Is this about the South still looking to win the Civil War?