Here are four statements about race and the recent series of
hate crimes that it seems few people, if anyone, is talking
about: - American culture is obsessed with pop-psychology and
the concomitant pathologizing of race and racism. - George
Zimmerman’s feelings had nothing to do with whether Trayvon
Martin’s murder was racist or not. [To be clear, it was.] - Hate
crime legislation places primary definitional power on
motivation, precisely as a move to re-establish, secure, and
consolidate white supremacy once again in the legal system. -
The recent media coverage of a number of apparent “racially
motivated” hate crimes is merely laying bare what millions of
everyday people already know by the fact of their continued
subordination in a system of national and global apartheid. As
I’ve written about before, racism is about power, not personal
feelings of bias or prejudice. I define racism with my students
as a political technology of division and hierarchization that
specifically utilizes the nexus of skin colo