The seven-year old racist.

March 29, 2006 2:26 PM

Autum Ashante is a racist.
posted by xmattxfx (77 comments total)

Yes, she's racist, Malkin's an idiot, and they deserve each other. Story over, thread destroyed, I'm taking a nap.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:30 PM on March 29, 2006

What's the beef with Darwin?
posted by PenDevil at 2:31 PM on March 29, 2006

Since when do seven year olds use words like "paradigm?"
posted by malaprohibita at 2:32 PM on March 29, 2006

I loved this movie. Steve Carell is hilarious!
posted by notmydesk at 2:35 PM on March 29, 2006

Metafilter is starting to suck ass. Though, it'll never suck as much ass as Michelle Malkin. Is the OP going for satire here?
posted by ryanhealy at 2:35 PM on March 29, 2006

She's cute.
posted by The Jesse Helms at 2:36 PM on March 29, 2006

PD, I believe young Autum's education contained a lot of shit about social Darwinism, which has nothing to do with Darwin proper. (P.S. I didn't take a nap.)

It's pretty clear that she's only a prodigy insomuch as she's a mouthpiece for her parents; think of her like that little girl who did the Welch's grape juice ads with the big eyes who was creepily adult and articulate - Autum doesn't really care about grape juice (um, racism?) and probably couldn't articulate a meaningful response to a pointed question but she's rewarded for speaking about it by Mr. and Mrs. Ashante. There are all sorts of really smart little kids who can rattle off facts and trivialities and use words most adults won't but they're terrible at seeing the big picture or explaining their motivations.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:37 PM on March 29, 2006

PenDevil: Maybe his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
posted by null terminated at 2:38 PM on March 29, 2006

The black mafia tried to get Dave Chappelle to dress up like a woman all the time. WHO IS REALLY RUNNING THE SHOW IS WHAT I WANT TO KNOW?
posted by billysumday at 2:38 PM on March 29, 2006

Sure missing matthowie and jessamyn.
posted by cavalier at 2:39 PM on March 29, 2006

She sounds cool to me. I hope she continues writing poetry.
posted by cell divide at 2:39 PM on March 29, 2006

PenDevil: Maybe his book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life
posted by null terminated at 2:38 PM PST on March 29

Some words have more than one meaning. A duck's bill is not a dollar bill is not a Bill Clinton.
posted by Optimus Chyme at 2:39 PM on March 29, 2006

She should hook up with this kid. Maybe their offspring would be beige and normal.
posted by jimmythefish at 2:41 PM on March 29, 2006

She's a poetry reader, not a poet, obviously. And I didn't see anything racist there.
posted by empath at 2:41 PM on March 29, 2006

the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life

Does "race" in this context refer to black, white, red or is it another word for species?

Let's get it straight before we begin our ANGRY RANTING.
posted by grubi at 2:42 PM on March 29, 2006

Racists suck, no matter what their color.

Michelle Malkin is just Chicken Soup for the Blackened Racist Soul. It's a bit of a disgusting market, but I'm sure she makes decent money from it.
posted by I Love Tacos at 2:42 PM on March 29, 2006

She's anti-evolution and anti-abortion. Seems like conservatives would like her.

Optimus is right. She's just a mouthpiece for her radical parents.
posted by Artifice_Eternity at 2:43 PM on March 29, 2006

You know, a funny thing happened this morning. My pot grew a mouth and a pair of legs, walked over to my kettle and started shouting "BLACK! YOU'RE BLACK!"

Didn't realize what was going on. Now I see that the author of "In Defence of Internment" is calling people racist.

So at least I know what that was about.
posted by PlusDistance at 2:44 PM on March 29, 2006

"At some future period , not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest Allies will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as the baboon, instead of as now between the Negro or Australian and the gorilla."
(Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man 2nd ed (New York: A. L. Burt Co., I 874), p. 178).
posted by null terminated at 2:49 PM on March 29, 2006

I think this is just what we need - more children expressing themselves, independently.
posted by iamck at 2:50 PM on March 29, 2006

Ha! Prussian Blue has a blog. Check out the last photo.
posted by Baby_Balrog at 2:51 PM on March 29, 2006

Well, nobody's perfect.
posted by empath at 2:52 PM on March 29, 2006

Since when do seven year olds use words like "paradigm?"

Since they can't say "twenty cents."
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 2:53 PM on March 29, 2006

if Ms Malkin were in power, the little brown kid would be sent off to the concentration camp, like the yellow people in WWII you know
posted by matteo at 2:54 PM on March 29, 2006

Will this end well?


No
No

posted by fire&wings at 2:55 PM on March 29, 2006

Virtually all Englishmen in Darwin's time viewed blacks as culturally and intellectually inferior to Europeans. Some men of that time (such as Louis Agassiz, a staunch creationist) went so far as to say they were a different species. Charles Darwin was a product of his times and no doubt viewed non-Europeans as inferior in ways, but he was far more liberal than most: He vehemently opposed slavery (Darwin 1913, especially chap. 21), and he contributed to missionary work to better the condition of the native Tierra del Fuegans. He treated people of all races with compassion.

So there's that.
posted by grubi at 2:58 PM on March 29, 2006

What I would say to the child:

Listen to "Strange Fruit". Suggest there may be more mileage in not naming your oppressor.

Or, just keep learning the same lesson -- that it's hard out here for an honest poet.
posted by surplus at 3:02 PM on March 29, 2006

Atum Ashante is a racist read the poem her parents wrote for her.
posted by shmegegge at 3:03 PM on March 29, 2006

grubi: I agree. PenDevil asked what the beef with Darwin was, I'm providing possible explanations. Not convincing explanations (to me), but reasons why this girl may have been taught that Darwin was racist.
posted by null terminated at 3:04 PM on March 29, 2006

Ah. Ok. Makes sense.

I just tend to reach for my links when I hear anti-evolutionism in any form. No harm, no foul here. :-)
posted by grubi at 3:06 PM on March 29, 2006

Malkin is right-- where is the outcry over this child, and why is the media focusing their outrage on white racist children? I mean, it's almost like Ashante could be kidnapped and murdered and nobody would even notice!

Thank God Malkin is on hand to point out this media bias!
posted by Astro Zombie at 3:06 PM on March 29, 2006

I don't know who Michelle Malkin is but anyone who can boil Amiri Baraka down to just an "America-bashing 9/11 conspiracy-monger" doesn't know shit about one of the best lving poets this country has (and one of the only holdouts left of the Beat Era).

I also know that anyone who will complain that any POET is an AMERICA-BASHER has no real insight on poetry anyway, and probably shouldn't be talking about it

AAAAAND I'm relatively sure that seven year olds can't really be racist. Even if they do have ingrained prejudices, they're still making their minds up on a lot.

At seven, my best friend was Korean, but I would still do an impression of him by tugging on my eyelids. At ten, I thought Rush Limbaugh made some valid points and at fourteen I thought that anarchy (Oi!) was a viable option.

I don't think you should put a lot of stock into anyone's opinions until [any age I can think up feels relly arbitrary because it's a very individual thing but seven is way too damned young].

I remember very clearly the day that a black friend of mine told me he was "supposed to hate [me] because [I]was Jewish." He didn't hate me, but he knew he was supposed to.

The girl has talent, and maybe some white people nurture it (instead of hitting her with a bunch of reactionary opinions and name-calls), she'll take it somewhere beautiful.
posted by elr at 3:19 PM on March 29, 2006

Darwin was a big fan of racial hierarchies, despite the fact that the very notion of such a hierarchy was completely meaningless within his theory.

That's the problem with Darwin. His theory of natural selection seemed (and seems) to be correct. But when it confronted his racist preconceptions, rather than challenging his own beliefs, he instead chose to try to give them scientific credence by bending his theory around them. Darwin was, in this way, one of the founders of Social Darwinism, and one of the first responsible for using his theory to give scientific justification to the extermination of cultures. His influence, and his logical fallacy, lives on in American meritocracy--Darwin's words "survive" and "reproduce" have merely been replaced with "make money." Similarly, the concept of "merit"--like "inferior"--is rarely defined, and its influence on the ability to "survive" is never measured. The worst victims, at least domestically, are the residents of urban ghettos, where it is not uncommon for a youth feel that they are constantly being told they are inferior to the rich white kids across town because their parents are poor, their schools are dilapidated, and they probably deserve to be in prison. Darwin seems like a natural figure to despise, in this light.
posted by dsword at 3:23 PM on March 29, 2006

Michelle Malkin is just doing what she's paid to do. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
posted by nixerman at 3:27 PM on March 29, 2006

Wait what?
posted by Baby_Balrog at 3:28 PM on March 29, 2006

please no more links to Michelle "I support my own internment" Malkin.
posted by destro at 3:30 PM on March 29, 2006

Uh, dsword, no. Darwin had absolutely nothing to do with Social Darwinism. Please don't spread this nonsense. Darwin was pretty much racist. But, as pointed out above, he was on the whole way ahead of his peers. Still, it's clear that Darwin did believe that race, as a scientific concept (though we now know it's not a scientific concept, Darwin couldn't know this at the time), was a product of evolution and therefore there could be a question of what races evolved from other races. This was basically the extent of Darwin's racism. The ideology of Social Darwinism is a completely different bag of bullshit. They basically chose Darwin so they could lend their racism an aura of scientific credibility.
posted by nixerman at 3:33 PM on March 29, 2006

I will discipline myself to direct my energies thoughtfully and constructively rather than wasting them in idle hatred.

Now sit down Whitey!!
posted by pwedza at 3:54 PM on March 29, 2006

Whatever happened to Sister Souljah?
posted by fungible at 4:30 PM on March 29, 2006

Baby_Balrog writes "Ha! Prussian Blue has a blog. Check out the last photo."

Holy shit! Check this out, everybody! I didn't know whether to laugh or cry.

I laughed

Good find, BB, good find.
posted by mr_roboto at 4:40 PM on March 29, 2006

Oh yay, another indoctrinated little homeschooler giving us normal homeschoolers a bad name. Though I would like to see her curriculum...
posted by Biblio at 4:42 PM on March 29, 2006

Michelle Malkin is a racist and the far right's "pet n____".
posted by mike3k at 5:07 PM on March 29, 2006

Michelle Malkin uttering even a word about other people's racism? Very rich. I can't decide if it's high comedy or just guano-crazy disconnection from reality.
posted by Emperor SnooKloze at 5:20 PM on March 29, 2006

Optimus Chyme we know that little girl. She's a real cutie! Not a racist though. We've since moved on to better juice.
posted by filchyboy at 5:41 PM on March 29, 2006

I don't think that poem is much more racist than the facts.
posted by Drexen at 5:52 PM on March 29, 2006

I prefer my child prodigy poets to have incurable diseases.

(OK, that was horrible. Sorry.)
posted by bardic at 6:00 PM on March 29, 2006

well, there's always the bird flu, bardic.

(me too)
posted by jonmc at 6:18 PM on March 29, 2006

That poem sounded like the same rantings conservative people in Malaysia (who are scarily the people in power in many ways) have about the "West" - that they bring in "yellow culture" and are corrupting the youths and are all-evil.

Not impressive.
posted by divabat at 6:27 PM on March 29, 2006

sarcasm on.........
As the evil white devil she rails against I have this to say, "What a cute little angry pickaninny she is. Isn't that just precious?"
sarcasm off


as an aside, I find it disturbing that the metafilter spell checker has 2 alternate spellings for picaninny!!
posted by Megafly at 6:36 PM on March 29, 2006

You're all missing Ms. Malkin's point, dammit. See, it's OK for Prussian Blue to be racists because blacks have racist child performers too! Get it? It's all even steven now.
posted by ereshkigal45 at 6:51 PM on March 29, 2006

nixerman,

Read the quote that null terminated posted, and also note my qualifer, "in this way." I wasn't saying that he was involved in the Social Darwinism movement, but he certainly was guilty of drawing similarly racist "scientific" conclusions. Also, compare that quote to this Wiki article on Social Darwinism, and you'll see the connection.

His notion of "civilized" and "savage" races smacks of Orientalism, a phenomenon that certainly predates Darwin, as does the desire to justify oppression through science. Darwin was neither the beginning nor the end of it. But I fail to see any reason to apologize for the man's blatantly racist views just because he was "way ahead of his peers." Acknowledging the man's faults says nothing about the validity of his theory.

One more thing, concerning your point that it was impossible for Darwin to know that there was no real biological basis for race. That's true, but it wasn't my point. My point was that the notion of "superiority" is foreign to an honest interpretation of the theory of evolution, the whole point of which is that nature, not man, decides what's best. He might as well have claimed that butterflies from Europe are better than butterflies from Africa simply because they live in Europe. There was no scientific reasoning behind his claims, but that didn't stop him from arguing that there were.

Back to the point of the post, Malkin's an idiot.
posted by dsword at 6:58 PM on March 29, 2006

Uh, no, Malkin's point is where's the outrage? Why is this ok? This little girl has been on all these shows and gotten all this positive recognition, and she is at best parroting her father's racist black-supremacist beliefs. It's not cool for Prussian Blue or Autum Ashante to be racists. It's not cool for the media and society and public culture to criticize Prussian Blue for being sick fucking Nazis, but then turn around and praise Autum Ashante for being a sick fucking Black Panther/Nation of Islam. They should be criticizing racism without regard to the skin color of the racist. That's the whole point.
posted by techgnollogic at 7:01 PM on March 29, 2006

Way to pick your fights techgnollogic. Do you have a newsletter I can subscribe to?
posted by bardic at 7:43 PM on March 29, 2006

Those girls' fathers are going to be very disappointed when a member of the "wrong" race comes to pick up their little girl for a date when they turn about 15.
posted by Ynoxas at 7:45 PM on March 29, 2006

You? No, not you.
posted by techgnollogic at 7:49 PM on March 29, 2006

techgnollogic:

You honestly thought that Autum's poem was as frightening, insidious, dangerous, or downright creepy as these girls? Because I'm not seeing it. Maybe it's just an emotional response, or maybe it's because anti-white rhetoric doesn't have a big effect on America, whereas white supremacist thinking and behavior is still rampant in this country, and it happens to be the viewpoint of a disturbingly large proportion of government officials, from the police on up.

If two people say they want to kill someone, but only one of them has a gun, worry about the guy with the gun first (or the two little blonde girls).
posted by dsword at 7:53 PM on March 29, 2006

Wait a minute, Mr. Straw Man. This "Where's the outrage? Why is this OK?" dodge usually requires that someone have actually said it was OK.

Prussian Blue and their parents are free to hold their views, and be ostracized. This kid is free to hold her views, but that was a wildly inappropriate poem for a public school. And the comment to the newspaper really does beg the question, then why are you still here?

This has absolutely no reflection at all on liberals who have criticized Prussian Blue, but never heard of Ashante, because there is no fucking inconsistency.

So again, Mr. Straw Man, stand back. I've got a match.
posted by dhartung at 7:54 PM on March 29, 2006

They should be criticizing racism without regard to the skin color of the racist.

And yet the only evidence of this supposed racism that Malkin offers is a poem decrying nationalism by whites, as well as the girl's relationship with groups that, I guess, we are supposed to just assume are racist, such as the Black Panthers.

Black nationalism and white nationalism are not exact equivalents. The girls in Prussian Blue are demonstratably racist -- proudly racist. I haven't yet seen any evidence that Autum Ashante preaches that blacks are inherently superior to whites. There's this quote, I suppose:

"All they do is just steal, rob and murder...that's the only thing they were raised to do. ... Even the ones that try to fix up with us, they're still devils. I feel they're devils and they should be gone. We should be away from them and still be in Africa."

But, even though it's quoted in many of the stories, it isn't attributed, and I haven't found the source of it yet, except they claim it comes from the girl.

By the way, there's no lack of people decrying Ashante's supposed racism. It's beome major Republican talking point.

Here's an actual interview with Ashante. Some of the pledge that she asked black children to recite with her went like this: "I pledge allegiance to my Black People," she said. "I will keep myself physically fit, building a strong body free from drugs and other substances which weaken me and make me less capable of protecting myself, my family and my Black brothers and sisters." Ooh -- terrible!

None of this sounds explicitly racist, which is generally pretty easy to recognize -- and Republican blogs have been full of it in response to the poem of a 7-yea-old girl. It looks like this:

"At least the precocious little sista gave a shout out to the Whizzle Nationalizzle.

Ain't no such thing as bad publicity an' shit, noam sayin'..."

And this:

A poetess young named Autum
Battled brave the evil, white golem.

But fell she with her muse

In their new, Nike shoes

That sweet Uncle Sam had bought ‘em.

----

Imagine your student made a poem stating that black men rob, rape, and murder at a rate 10 times that of white men, that black people don’t study and sit at home waiting for their welfare check, conceiving more babies to increase the mothers WICC payments. Would any African American parent object to this?

---

Why do blacks always complain? Don’t they realize that they have won? Whites will have to take care of blacks until the end of eternity. They are just wards of the state. We have to feed and clothe them. Pat them on the head and tell them how wonderful they are. We didn’t lose the war we just handed it over to the elite. At least we are legitimate adults. Can you imagine being part of a race that can’t take care of themselves. Blacks have absolutely nothing to be proud of. It’s as if they are children and we whites have to babysit. What we must realize is that like children blacks need to be told what to do. If you don’t what you get is Detroit.
posted by Astro Zombie at 8:13 PM on March 29, 2006

No one said it was ok? What?
posted by techgnollogic at 8:16 PM on March 29, 2006

Offtopic: Michelle Malkin is a dumb ass.
posted by chunking express at 8:18 PM on March 29, 2006

Is this thread over now?
posted by I Love Tacos at 8:30 PM on March 29, 2006

You know who can overcome the divide separating Autum Ashante and Prussian Blue? Pedophiles. We just don't give them enough credit.
posted by bardic at 8:45 PM on March 29, 2006

None of this sounds explicitly racist, which is generally pretty easy to recognize -- and Republican blogs have been full of it in response to the poem of a 7-yea-old girl. It looks like this:

Then you quote a comment by a user who is a white supremacist from New Zealand. Truly damning. Anyone can post a comment to that blog. The "Republican Blog" itself, Discarded Lies, is one I've never heard of... but the post you link to notes Ashante's similarity to Prussian Blue.

Then you take racist quotes from American Renaissance. American Renaissance?!? You found racist comments on a white-supremacist website (which you then falsely label a "Republican blog"). We'll I'll be damned.

By your standards, there's a lack of evidence that the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam are racist, and American Renaissance is just a run-of-the-mill Republican blog. What was that about racism being pretty easy to recognize?

Meanwhile, New York City Councilman Charles Barron said he couldn't understand why anyone would be offended. He characterized the girl as "brave" and "outspoken in telling the truth," and he defended her 162-word poem, praising it as evoking "peace, power and pride about her heritage."

But he's a former Black Panther himself, so no surprise there. He is currently a Democrat.
posted by techgnollogic at 8:57 PM on March 29, 2006

African Americans make up what, 15% of the population? When they talk about hating on whitey, it's funny and pathetic. When whites do it, it's equally pathetic, but kind of scary, IMHO.
posted by bardic at 9:05 PM on March 29, 2006

Michelle Malkin is unquestionably a racist.

Darwin? this little girl? Hard to tell.
posted by delmoi at 9:24 PM on March 29, 2006

dhartung,

The point was more that I don't really care what she said, it's the reaction among right wingers that bothers me more. Nor do I really care what Prussian Blue has to say. They just creep me out more. But frankly what Ashante said wasn't half as offensive as the racist garbage my social studies teachers taught me in middle school. For example, did you know that Andrew Jackson was a great president?

Call it a double standard, but I have no problem whatsoever with people pointing out that the Prussian Blue girls are morons even if they don't simultaneously tell Autum Ashante that she shouldn't be upsettin' the white folk.
posted by dsword at 10:27 PM on March 29, 2006

Andrew Jackson did have a terrific head of hair, though. Glorious, really.
posted by Astro Zombie at 10:33 PM on March 29, 2006

so nice that he ought to have been scalped for it!
posted by Hat Maui at 11:33 PM on March 29, 2006

Darwin and slavery: His own words.
posted by biffa at 4:50 AM on March 30, 2006

From biffa's link:

It makes one’s blood boil, yet heart tremble, to think that we Englishmen and our American descendants, with their boastful cry of liberty, have been and are so guilty: but it is consolation to reflect, that we at least have made a greater sacrifice, than ever made by any nation, to expiate our sin.

I wonder (genuinely) what sacrifice he meant?
posted by Drexen at 6:18 AM on March 30, 2006

Gawd, do conservatives not have enough to get worked up about that they have to worry about things like this? The poem was stupid. Someone, ideally a black intellectual, should argue with her about it. That's about all that should happen.
posted by klangklangston at 7:06 AM on March 30, 2006

I wonder (genuinely) what sacrifice he meant?

Did he not mean the abolition of slavery?
posted by techgnollogic at 4:04 PM on March 30, 2006

White Nationalism Put U In Bondage

She's a moron. Anyone who believes they can substitute "u" for "you" deserves to be beaten up in school.
posted by nlindstrom at 4:25 PM on March 30, 2006

Prince disagrees.
posted by klangklangston at 5:17 PM on March 30, 2006

She's a moron. Anyone who believes they can substitute "u" for "you" deserves to be beaten up in school.

Why stop there - I say we drop this new-fangled "you" business and go back to using "ye" and "thee/thou"!
posted by Drexen at 6:29 AM on March 31, 2006

She's a moron.

She's also seven.
posted by iamck at 1:27 PM on March 31, 2006

She's also seven.
posted by iamck at 3:27 PM CST on March 31 [!]

Which ironically would qualify her as an old maid if she was one of the white supremacists.

Prince disagrees.
posted by klangklangston at 7:17 PM CST on March 30 [!]

Nothing compares 2 U.
posted by Ynoxas at 1:41 PM on March 31, 2006