A brief history of kente cloth would emphasize that it is the pride of Ghana, where it originated, and it is typically worn on special occasions....
[The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 isn't] “black” legislation. No one, whatever their race or ethnicity, should want inhumane police officers roaming through their city....
The stoles read as a vague and confused declaration by lawmakers that they stood together out of respect for the African-ness of their fellow citizens. What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric.
June 10, 2020
"In their eagerness to display dazzling empathy and solidarity, they only muddied the current conversation about race."
Writes Robin Givhan in "Congress’s kente cloth spectacle was a mess of contradictions" (WaPo).
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A brief history of kente cloth would emphasize that it is the pride of Ghana, where it originated, and it is typically worn on special occasions....
Pandering is not a special occasion. It happens all the time.
I wonder how many people see this kente cloth stunt as incredibly patronizing.
Democracy Dies in Darkness!
A lot of establishment Democrats need to be culled as well.
Silly Democrats! To show true solidarity, they should have draped themselves in chains.
you do know that the SLAVE trade continues in africa to this day, right?
A particularly American issue? Has any of them ever dealt with the police in Eastern Europe or Latin America?
You do know that the slave trade continues in africa to this day, right?
This woman from Ghana explains the problem quite well:
https://twitter.com/obianuju/status/1270053042340139008?fbclid=IwAR1VKOw8HgwDrf4u1kur8euldkGHaTzLD2G-QKwNHlzQErYtO0E_0xWfAgs
Sorry, but it is black legislation (or is it Black legislation?). No one would have cared if George Floyd had been white.
What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric.
Never thought it would happen it but on this statement I agree with Robin Givhan
Of course, she butchers a metaphor and misses the grander point that it should apply to the stagecraft of all the racial the protests and white virtue signaling, but...baby steps.
Subjects kneel. Citizens don't. The Democrats want to turn us into subjects.
At least Nadler did not try to kneel. That would have really been farce. It was funny enough to see 80 year old Nancy unable to get up.
Is it racist to say that I am exhausted by all of their exhaustion? The angry neck-snapping rhetoric about fantastical white privilege and imaginary systemic bias is causing me to wonder if the local klaven is taking applications. It would be pure comedy if it weren’t so bizarre to see Oprah hosting a conversation about wealth disparity.
- Krumhorn
As for Nancy complaining about high heels, my mother who lived to 103 told her 80 year old nieces who were complaining about age, "I wore high heels when I was 80." So, I guess Nancy is good for another 20, although her recent speeches do make me wonder. My mother regretfully gave up Martinis at 90.
You mean an extreme form of cultural appropriation and assumption that wearing something from modern Ghana culture represents solidarity with americans of any form of african descent was stupid?!?!?!? REALLY !?!??!
Oh wait, so you don't want to racialize everything? Because most of the time it seems that you do.
Was the kente cloth clambake and kneeling session "Congress" or simply the Pelosi posse?
They may have "muddied the waters" but the writer's imprecise use of terns has certainly muddied the discourse.
Imagine, if you will, a nation where politicians pander on racial issues during a pandemic. A nation where a specific race is incapable of racist actions while the very existence of another race is evidence of systemic racism. Imagine a world where violence and destruction are the means of protesting violent acts. Next stop the twilight zone.
And cultural appropriation too.
“What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric.”
Every action taken by Democrat elected officials and their mindless minions, including this one, emphasizes exactly that. The defect just isn’t what the fatuous Ms. Givhan thinks it is.
If we wait another couple of days we can be treated to the sight of Pelosi wearing an enormous Angela Davis Afro complete with a hair pick tucked on the side.
"Imagine Nancy Pelosi kneeling in a Sioux war bonnet..."
https://www.aleksandreia.com/2020/06/08/nancy-pelosi-kneeling/
The messaging symbolism of Democrats in reaction to the brutality and riots taking place in their urban bastions is muddled and awful.
A brief history of kente cloth would emphasize that it is the pride of Ghana, where it originated, and it is typically worn on special occasions...
Conflating race and nationality, like all blacks are the same. Did they confuse the kente with a Tallit, a Jewish prayer shawl? For Pete's sake, a Do-rag would have been more culturally sensitive for Pelosi to wear.
And the knee...
A group of about 100 public defenders and private defense attorneys took a knee outside the Dane County Courthouse Monday for nearly 9 minutes to symbolize the amount of time former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin had his knee on the neck of George Floyd before Floyd died.
They might as well have painted "Reelect Trump".
Protesters painted "defund police" in giant letters on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard Monday night.
I for one, loved Nancy’s “ I’ve Fallen and Can’t Get Up” moment.
Wait, I heard only yesterday that UK police have a brutality problem too. Even though their balls were surgically removed decades ago.
No matter what white people do it will be wrong.
Love it. Not just the Toynbeean adoption by elites of the fashion of the formerly despised as a general thing, but as an example of how shallow most peoples' understanding is.
Kente cloth itself is embedded in the development of the modern world economy, including the slave trade. The tradition is that two brothers in Ghana got the idea from watching spiders, about 400 years ago; the history, by coinkidink, is that Portuguese traders brought silk cloth from Asia to trade for slaves and other African goods in that period.
At first apparently the silk fabrics were undone by west African weavers in order to use separate threads, but fairly soon they took to using entire strips interwoven with other, local and imported materials.
So kente is an African tradition that itself grew out of the early capitalist economy and a product of multiculturalism.
The cultural-political-spiritual significance and meaning ascribed to it are of course arbitrary and ideological as is always the case.
Narr
Not a kneeler, myself
Isn't this typical of systemic racism?
the pride of Ghana
I would've thought that "Ghana's dancing pallbearers" - BBC would be The Pride Of.
So they'll soon be referring to themselves as AFRICAN-american?
Do those rental places have a full Dress Dashiki Tuxedo suitable for funerals such as all those in Chicago where blacks are killing other blacks (which the MSM so goes out of its ways to avoid mentioning)?
What this ridiculous spectacle — the looting and riots as well as a white (!) funeral carriage for a street thug and topped off with Congressional “leaders” kneeling in abasement — is that the DNC’s polling of black voters must be pretty scary to them. Their problem for Democrats is that they have conditioned themselves to view black people as a monolithic block who are impressed with lots of talk and lots of showmanship. Some are, some aren’t. Trump is going to get the ones who aren’t. His problem is going to be translating that into black votes for Republicans further down the ticket. Don’t know if he can do that.
When former D.C. mayor Marion Barry was in sudden need of some racial solidarity with the black jurors on his Federal trial he too took to wearing a Kente cloth stole. And hat and tie. It worked reasonably well. He was found guilty of only one of 14 charges. To get to that point the Black jurors had ignored the judge's instructions, and he was forced to declare a mistrial on the remaining charges.
Democrats believe skin color determines ability, behavior, even political party.
Democrats are racists.
We all know that.
Why do we tolerate it?
Eliminating the ability under law of government to take note of a person's skin color would eliminate about 90% of actual racism in the US overnight.
It's just the effects of U.S. blacks having an average IQ of 86. They're told that it's white people holding them back, and they go feral as a result. That's good for the black leaders.
The right thing is identify as American, not black; and teach good character. Good character trumps IQ as a ticket to success.
Quite the opposite of everything that the mob recommends today too.
The kneeling kente cloth episode struck me as desperate. I also took it as a sign of how much the Democrats fear Trump. He's acquired significant Black support and that is terrifying to them.
I'd have gone with Kwanzaa candles.
Yeah, that damn Trump holding up a bible at a church that had been impacted by riots = cynical photo op.
Dems kneeling with cultural appropriation dressings = brave commitment.
Pardon my laughter... And not just at Pelosi needing help to rise.
Scott Adams says he can't help because social-media vulnerable people don't have free speech. That's why you need retired people.
"No one, whatever their race or ethnicity, should want inhumane police officers roaming through their city...."
Are there any examples of such "roaming"?
"The stoles read as a vague and confused declaration by lawmakers that they stood together out of respect for the African-ness of their fellow citizens."
Which, of course, actual African African Americans recognized and resented. You can look it up on YouTube.
"What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric"
What defect exactly--that their fellow Dems promoted systemic racism, supported by Dem voters, in majority Dem cities for decades?
Bad theatre by bad actors inciting more bad acts in the real world. Politics 2020.
"[The Justice in Policing Act of 2020 isn't] “black” legislation. No one, whatever their race or ethnicity, should want inhumane police officers roaming through their city...."
Yeah, nobody wants an inhumane dog-catcher, either. But it's the dogs that are really bothered about it.
Next week they can do the rabbit dance to the sound of native drums in their war paint and feather outfits.
For the 4th of July they should don sombreros and ponchos with a mariachi band accompaniment.
Then maybe they could get saris and other Indian (dot not feather) garb and have a Bollywood extravaganza.
Around the world in 80 days!
I'm so happy you people got a bit of good news to hang on to. Please reward Ann Althouse for boosting your in the toilet self-esteem my hitting up her Amazon gateway to consumer culture. Jeff bezos is desperately in need of more billions and by the time she and me will be able to travel to Austin Texas gas prices will no doubt be higher.
Today's American Democrats, along with their boosters who comment here and elsewhere on the internet, are allllmost beyond parody. How an outlet like Babylon Bee can consistently produce fresh content given the out-and-proud ridiculousness of their primary subject matter is beyond me. I thought Trump's Bible photo-op was predictable but mostly fine, given he's nominally a Christian (at least as much as Obama claimed to be - Islamophilic Freudian slips notwithstanding). But NONE of these Congressclowns have any business donning ceremonial kente cloth - even the black ones.
Anyone who trusts Democrats with the future of this country is either rooting against the US or is really, really, really dumb.
Considering that Democrats consider themselves the champions of the black community, but then run the very police departments that they then condemn, cultural insensitivity should pretty much be expected.
During the funeral yesterday, the mayor of Houston was there and announced that as soon as he got back to his office he was going to sign an executive order to ban choke holds, etc. I didn't find any of the orders objectionable, but I was amazed that he not only was praising himself for taking actions that he could have done at any time - he's in his second term as mayor - but hadn't until there was a crisis, but he had the gall to not sign it until he got back into his office so the police could continue business as normal for a couple more days.
Has the WaPo ever written that Trump has shown empathy and solidarity with blacks and working class Americans in general? I don't think so. Only D's "empathetic". R's just pander according to the WaPo. Do you really think that if the first lady was to wear African clothes in "solidarity" - Givens would approve?
Be Nancy Pelosi for Halloween!: A $4,000 pantsuit, $1,000 pair of shoes, a shot of Botox and a kente cloth stole.
Blacks: please elect democratics, so they can continue to wreck your cities, and keep you in chains.
rh, when you say "Scott Adams says" you sound like a housewife from the 1950s saying "my husband says". No wonder you don't believe in white privilege you don't even know how to behave like a white man.
I'm betting that the 'Free Zone' in Seattle is going to work out. Looks solid.
WaPo had to publish some content. It was either this column or Daily Jumble, That Scrambled Word Game.
What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric.
The defect which seems woven into our country's fabric is the need to emphasize with stagecraft.
What is real when everything becomes a production?
Professional lady said...
The kneeling kente cloth episode struck me as desperate. I also took it as a sign of how much the Democrats fear Trump. He's acquired significant Black support and that is terrifying to them.
Bingo !
"In their eagerness to display dazzling empathy and solidarity, they only muddied the current conversation about race." [Emphasis added]
That word: "display." The "dazzling empathy and solidarity" was a DISPLAY. But what they actually DO is based on zero empathy and solidarity to anybody or anything other than power-seeking.
In some cultures it was common to hire professional mourners, in order to punch up the obsequies. This has that feeling.
There is no "current conversation about race." There are lectures aplenty but no conversations.
And there won't be.
"Huckleberry Finn" taken off of school reading lists years ago
GWTW going, going, ...
How long til "Blazing Saddles" rides off into the sunset?
And Airplane? ("I speak jive")
Are you leftists happy with that?
The ULTIMATE Pandering Photo Op. And they call Trump holding a Bible in front of a church a photo op...What freaking hypocrites....and then as in life, Nancy had to be helped up. Great optics!! NOT!!
There is nothing that looks dumber than a white guy in Sub-Saharan African fabrics. It's like Bradley Whitford's line in Get Out, "I would have voted for Obama a third time if I could." That line just lets everybody know what kind of liberal he is.
I agree with Francisco D., incredibly patronizing and meaningless.
Robin Givhan wants to have a conversation about race. All right:
"The single most relevant fact for understanding America right now is the one you are least supposed to mention: Blacks are vastly more homicidal than any other racial or ethnic group."
- TakiMag
It isn't "Congress's" spectacle. It is the spectacle of the Congressional Democratic Party's leadership. These are not the same thing, despite Robin Givens apparent desire to confuse them.
Apparently we have left Tom Wolfe territory and are now in a novel by Kurt Schlichter. Or maybe Tom Kratman.
I've seen another photo of Pelosi with a different patterned Kente cloth around her neck. Do they have a stash of them somewhere? Is there a House costume department?
I don't understand how kneeling for 8 minutes is a show of support for Floyd. He's not the one who was kneeling.
a defect woven into our own country’s fabric
So it is an original sin from which we can never be absolved? It doesn't matter that my family never owned slaves, fought to protect people of other races and nationalities from brutalities that continue here and elsewhere to this day, or that I see all my neighbors as neighbors rather than lumping them into categories based on their skin color or sexual preference. I'm part of the country and thus must repent for the defect.
Well then, Trump needs to complete the Wall, so nobody else will come here and be tainted by this sin.
"the pride of Ghana"
Incorrect. The pride of Ghana are the dancing pallbearers!
Kirk Parker said...
Apparently we have left Tom Wolfe territory and are now in a novel by Kurt Schlichter. Or maybe Tom Kratman.
Schlicter's novels (I have read all of them) were supposed top be fiction , not an instruction manual.
Tom Wolfe nailed this type of virtue signaling in his classic, "Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catchers.
Tom Wolfe nailed this behavior in his classic Radical Chic and Mau Mauing the Flak Catcher!
Kunta Kente cloth designed by LeVar Burton
The cops in the blue cities where all of this crap is going on should all stay home for two weeks. Especially the security details of the politicians.
"Anyone who trusts Democrats with the future of this country is either rooting against the US or is really, really, really dumb."
Or? Could be both. Just sayin'.
I wonder what Ms. Givhan will be wearing to the 2021 Trump inauguration parties.
Chuck and Nancy should go to Sylvia's
Well, for the Democratic leaders it came down to either the kente cloth or carry watermelons and fried chicken, and they flipped a coin that came up "Kente."
Either way would have shown the same level of genuine knowledge and concern for African-Americans: Zero.
Even with the best of intentions, a douche move is a douche move. How is it possible that there are adults who don't understand this?
Who knew empathy could be dazzling?
Howard has finally stolen the crown of "My Favorite Edgelord" from America's Politico. Keep up the good work Howie!
I wonder if the significance of kente cloth is related to the loose indeterminacy of African thought.
"In language, the African tradition aims at circumlocution rather than at exact definition. The direct statement is considered crude and unimaginative; the veiling of all contents in ever-changing paraphrase is considered the criterion of intelligence and personality. In music, the same tendency toward obliquity and ellipsis is noticeable . . ."
Ernest Borneman, in Jazz, eds. Hentoff and McCarthy, cited by Cavell _The Claim of Reason_ p.8
It's becoming the democrat way. Are democrats becoming Africanized?
All these white people that are so ashamed of their white status, privilege and history can take Birkel's advice and just leave. If I'm not mistaken she is part native American. She commented several years ago that there are about three million American Indians and the US is about three million square miles so everyone who isn't and America Indian to kindly get off the Indian's square mile. And if the blacks aren't happy, Ghana can use them to build up that country.
Char Char @ 11:18am,
Dude, it is the Daily Jumble... they just put the wrong headline on it.
Howard has finally stolen the crown of "My Favorite Edgelord" from America's Politico. Keep up the good work Howie!
"Schlicter's novels ... were supposed top be fiction , not an instruction manual."
Indeed, and so was 1984.
Howard,
The Seattle Autonomous Zone needs educated white male sympathetics to lead discussions, keep order and organize Roberts Rules click frenzies.
We likely share the same suspicion of the 'Global Elite' and we strive for a totally new society.
Bring food!
A particularly American issue? Has any of them ever dealt with the police in Eastern Europe or Latin America?
While in a nightclub in Eastern Europe, I and all the other patrons were ordered to the ground at gunpoint by masked policemen probably looking for a payoff from the owner. One guy next to me said "I haven't seen anything like this since I was in Guatemala." A woman nearby calmly lit a cigarette. When I mentioned that she seemed rather nonchalant, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "I used to live in Libya."
She's right, lose your Pro-Choice religion, do not indulge in liberal license, diversity (i.e. color judgment) breeds adversity.
The stagecraft of Democrats reflects their actual beliefs. They think of US citizens as members of groups, with each group defined as to its behavior, attributes, even political persuasion, without variance. And groups are defined by things like skin color.
Yes, the Dems' identity politics is vile, but they really do believe in it. To hell with them.
MaryBeth: "I don't understand how kneeling for 8 minutes is a show of support for Floyd. He's not the one who was kneeling."
Right. It is odd: why mimic the racist oppressor?
And what's with kneeling for the flag, really. Everybody understands that Kap et al. despise it, but the act itself still symbolizes homage and submission.
Em-pathetic.
And what's with kneeling for the flag, really
It celebrates the Democrats, KKK et al who took a knee when the Republicans stood against slavery (i.e. involuntary exploitation, redistributive change) and diversity.
"A particularly American issue"
One of the unfortunate results of the U.S. being so large, influential, and yet isolated is that so few Americans have any idea of what life is like outside the U.S. — it can be very, very good in some places, and appallingly bad in many others, far beyond what most Americans can imagine.
What they needed to emphasize with their stagecraft is that this is a particularly American issue — a defect woven into our own country’s fabric.
Name the nation that does not have the identical "defect".
Trying to prove you aren't one of the bad white people with a trick like this is tone deaf solipsism with a large dollop of condescension on top. Givhan is right to call bullshit here.
The better approach, when meeting with people who are different or whom you do not know, is to talk with them, listening carefully to what they have to say.
Ideally these conversations would be held off camera, but that would not serve the intended purpose in this situation.
No wonder we hate politicians so much.
One of the unfortunate results of the U.S. being so large, influential, and yet isolated is that so few Americans have any idea of what life is like outside the U.S. — it can be very, very good in some places, and appallingly bad in many others, far beyond what most Americans can imagine.
This is true. I extend the idea to history (being a history teacher). Every year I tell all of my classes that every single one of them has already won the lottery. They were lucky enough to be born in the United States in the 21st Century. That means that they all have a higher standard of living than 99% of all humans who have ever lived.
I teach in California, so I also tell my students that California is a very strange place, and not at all like the rest of the country.
MaryBeth: "I don't understand how kneeling for 8 minutes is a show of support for Floyd. He's not the one who was kneeling."
--
Chauvin was clearly appropriating the kneel to add insult to injury.
Africanized D's. The worst kind.
Narr
Blame hardin
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