Racism

Racism and Propaganda

 

This is a Neptunian tale of old delusions and evil intentions gone awry.   

 

Andrew Breitbart (Neptune trine Venus and Chiron, Sun in Aquarius opposite Moon, Sun trine Jupiter and Uranus) is a propagandist promoting rightwing causes.  He engineered the downfall of Acorn, a national organization devoted to helping the poor.  He scored this victory by publicizing a couple of provocateurs, costumed as a pimp and prostitute, visiting Acorn offices to ask workers there how they could get a mortgage and other financial resources. 

 

The firestorm resulting from mass media airing of those videos caused government funding to be withdrawn from Acorn—before it was revealed that Breitbart had created a lie.

 

Breitbart's most recent effort—an attempt to paint the NAACP as a racist organization—backfired.  Breitbart claims "someone" sent him a video of Shirley Sherrod, of the US Department of Agriculture, speaking at a small town NAACP meeting. Her father was murdered by a white racist. In a brief snippet of that speech, Ms. Sherrod described an incident in 1986 when she felt a jolt of prejudice against a white couple who were threatened with foreclosure. 

 

The point Sherrod was making is that she then had an epiphany and reversed herself, and helped the white couple save their farm.  She realized that poverty is the heart of the problem we call racism.  

 

By editing a snippet of the video in which Sherrod describes a momentary feeling of racial disdain, and publicizing this via TV news outlets, Breitbart managed to ignite another firestorm which resulted in Sherrod being fired from her job. 

 

Seems everyone was ready to go with the old "seeing is believing" delusion and bought Breitbart's crude lie—before Sherrod and others protested, and the truth leaked out. 

 

If you compare the Fox News account of Breitbart's public relations effort with the MSNBC account, you'll get a strong sense of the Neptunian-ruled confusion and conflict racism causes.  Which brings me to the point I want to make.

Racism is one form of xenophobia, defined as "an unreasonable fear or hatred of foreigners or strangers or of that which is foreign or strange." (dictionary.com.)  It surprises most contemporary people to learn that there was less xenophobia and/or racism is Colonial America, and more "mixed marriages" per capita than there are today. Back then, people of different races labored together, which quickly dissolved whatever xenophobia they originally felt toward one another. 

 

What engendered the stigma against African Americans was that they were expensive property, and their mixed-race children were legally the property of their owners.  English indentured servants were freed after their indenture period was up. Indians were so "disobedient" and headstrong they were soon discarded as laborers.  Many mixed marriages were broken up when the non-black partner moved away—although others were kept alive by runaway slaves and indentured servants joining Indian tribes. 

 

"Ol' Massa" paid a lot of money for those African slaves whose labors made him rich, and created laws to keep them separate from whites and Indians.  

 

Today, "Ol' Massa" is reincarnate among the ruling elite, and the stigma against African Americans persists, kept alive after the Civil War by Jim Crow laws and customs, and despite the Supreme Court's reversal of a previous ruling declaring an African American to be one-fifth of a white man. 

 

The Sherrod scandal unfolded with Neptune conjunct Chiron and both opposite Mercury.  By Winter Solstice 2012, Neptune will still be conjunct Chiron with both in a T square to Mercury opposite Jupiter.  Neptunian taboos change slowly.