Tag Archives: racism

Using Brecht to Explain U.S. Gun Laws

By Robin Bates | Published: July 19, 2021

Brecht has as clear an explanation as any as to why gun laws are tilted towards Whites.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Bertolt Brecht, Exception and the Rule, gun laws, open carry, Stand Your Ground | Comments closed

White Privilege Explained in Oral Poetry

By Robin Bates | Published: July 13, 2021

Tennessee teacher Hawn was fired in part for showing a video of an oral poet reciting this poem about white privilege.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "White Privilege", Kyla Jenée Lacey, race instruction, teaching, white privilege | Comments closed

Faulkner on Racism’s Deep Roots

By Robin Bates | Published: April 18, 2021

Faulkner’s “Intruder in the Dust” shows how deep into the American psyche racism reaches, helping explain the spate of police killings or unarmed Blacks.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged George Floyd, Intruder in the Dust, police shootings, Sandra Bland, William Faulkner | Comments closed

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Hans Robert Jauss, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

Victims of White Supremacist Exoticizing

By Robin Bates | Published: March 22, 2021

In “When I Was Growing Up,” Nellie Wong speaks to how American whites have long exoticized Asian-Americans.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "trying to be white", "way it was", "When I Was Growing Up", Asian-American identity, Lucille Clifton, Nellie Wong | Comments closed

How Whites Cancel Readers of Color

By Robin Bates | Published: March 7, 2021

Rightwingers complain that liberals are canceling Dr. Seuss. Real cancelation, however, uses racial stereotyping, of which Seuss was occasionally guilty.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged cancel culture, Dr. Seuss | Comments closed

Angry Black Woman vs. Angry White Men

By Robin Bates | Published: January 17, 2021

For MLK Day, a June Jordan poem addressing angry white men.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged "Jim Crow The Sequel", Capitol Hill insurrection, Go Set a Watchman, Harper Lee, June Jordan, Martin Luther King Day, white entitlement | Comments closed

Specter of Racial Violence Haunts Faulkner

By Robin Bates | Published: September 3, 2020

Faulkner’s depiction of racial violence shows America’s dark side. Faulkner’s own racial views are less important than the truths that he shows.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Absolom Absolom, Light in August, segregation, Sound and the Fury, Toni Morrison, William Faulkner | Comments closed

O’Connor: Some Racism but Still Great

By Robin Bates | Published: September 1, 2020

Flannery O’Connor may have been a racist, but her depiction of the fragility of white racism is spot on.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Artificial Nigger, Everything that Rises Must Converge, Flannery O'Connor, Revelation | Comments closed