This made me chuckle. I’m not sure whether Nancy Pelosi has much control over her face, so her expressions can be quite difficult to read; though I’m guessing her applause was not entirely enthusiastic. Bernie Sanders, on the other hand, was less inscrutable.

Via Darleen in the comments, a tale of coal dust and woe: 

A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall. Then a photograph caught my attention.

This one here, since you ask. 

Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface.

The author, incidentally, a “poet and essayist” named Rashaad Thomas, seems determined to racially categorise every person who features in his tiny drama. And so, we’re informed, pointedly, that this person is white, and this other person is not.

I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive.

He was white, you see. Be careful not to trip over the implications.  

Yet the photograph remained on the wall.

Feel his pain, you heathens.

My concern that the photograph of men in blackface was a threat to me and my face and voice were [sic] ignored.

For once, rather surprisingly, the world did not bend to the demands of a whiny, racially neurotic narcissist.

A business’ photograph of men with blackened faces culturally says to me, “Whites Only.” It says people like me are not welcome.

If we peel away the affectations of racial victimhood, clung to so tightly, and instead take “people like me” to denote something more specific – say, a poet of limited talent whose every other tweet mentions race, who refers, seemingly without irony, to “Amer’KKKa,” and who claims that an old photo of coal miners drinking beer threatens his wellbeing – then Mr Thomas may be onto something.

Swollen with anticipation, we turn our attention to the self-refuting world of Ms Sandrine Schaefer. This time, our inexplicably underfunded performance artist has taken her talents to the streets of Belfast, where her attempts to disconcert the natives with mind-shattering concepts can be witnessed below. The featured work, Pace Investigations No. 9, reveals “tensions between mechanical, cyclical, and felt time, shared in a site of historic trauma.” Tensions that are, we’re assured, “palpable.”

James Kirkup on modern policing and the case of Harry Miller: 

The cop said he was in possession of 30 Tweets by me. I asked if any contained criminal material. He said…. No. I asked if any came close to being criminal… and he read me a limerick. Honestly. A limerick. A cop read me a limerick over the phone. I said, I didn’t write that. He said, “Ah. But you liked it and promoted it.” I asked why he was wasting his time on a non-crime. He said, “It’s not a crime, but it will be recorded as a hate incident”… The cop repeatedly called the complainant “the victim.” I asked how there could be a victim if, as he’d established, there was no crime. He said, that’s just how it works.

Allen Farrington on when accusations of “white privilege” are revealed for what they are: 

When challenged to defend her accusation [of “white privilege”], but before she was informed by [David] Webb that he is black, [CNN analyst, Areva] Martin retorted that “this is a whole long conversation I don’t have time to get into.” But if she were confident in her position, she would be able to explain it in plain English. Instead, she assumed that by simply invoking this concept, the discussion would be resolved in her favour. Because she was using the term as an ideological cudgel and not an argument, she didn’t want to explain at all, and was noticeably annoyed when asked to do so. “By virtue of being a white male, you have white privilege” has the appearance of an explanation, but she was really just rephrasing her previous assertion using more words.

As Farrington notes, Ms Martin seems to have assumed Mr Webb’s skin colour based solely on his reference to personal responsibility, which no non-white person would ever invoke, you see. So, no racism there, clearly.

Somewhat related, the second item here. 

And Katherine Birbalsingh on the fallout of pretentious racial guilt:

Via Farnsworth M Muldoon, a tale of feminist romance:

A discussion ensues. The teller of said tale, Ms Kelly Jo-Bluen, describes her interests as “feminism, international justice,” and “coloniality.” “White supremacist capitalist heteropatriarchy” is, we’re told, “the problem.”

Consider this an open thread, in which to share links and bicker.