Left-Wing Magazine Suggests the Eclipse is Racist Because it Didn’t Pass Over Black Communities

Far left magazine, The Atlantic published a long essay about the solar eclipse, written by Brooklyn law school professor Alice Ristroph titled ‘American Blackout: A tour of the solar eclipse’s path reveals a nation that fought to maintain a different sort of totality.’

In this essay, Ristroph suggests the solar eclipse is racist because its path, where the eclipse can be viewed in totality, doesn’t pass over high populations of black people. This isn’t satire. It is real.

Excerpt from The Atlantic:

On August 21, 2017, a total solar eclipse will arrive mid-morning on the coast of Oregon. The moon’s shadow will be about 70 miles wide, and it will race across the country faster than the speed of sound, exiting the eastern seaboard shortly before 3 p.m. local time. It has been dubbed the Great American Eclipse, and along most of its path, there live almost no black people.

Oregon, where this begins, is almost entirely white. The 10 percent or so of state residents who do not identify as white are predominantly Latino, American Indian, Alaskan, or Asian. There are very few black Oregonians, and this is not an accident. The land that is now Oregon was not, of course, always inhabited by white people, but as a U.S. territory and then a state, Oregon sought to get and stay white. Among several formal efforts at racial exclusion was a provision in the original state constitution of 1857 that prohibited any “free Negro or Mulatto” from entering and residing in the state.

From Oregon, the Great American Eclipse will travel through Idaho and Wyoming. (It will catch a tiny unpopulated piece of Montana, too.) Percentage-wise, Idaho and Wyoming are even whiter than Oregon. And as in Oregon, but even more so, the few non-white residents of Idaho and Wyoming are not black—they are mostly Latino, American Indian, and Alaskan. The astronomers tell us where lies the path of totality; the census tells us where live the people and what colors they are. The census is detailed, and precise, but its very categories should bring unease. A census is not just a matter of counting; it involves assessing and classifying and evaluating. This is particularly true of the U.S. census, a window into this nation’s dreams of totality and its always dangerous compromises.

From Kansas, the eclipse goes to Missouri, still mostly bypassing black people, though now much more improbably. About a third of Kansas City, Missouri, is black, but most of the city lies just south of the path of totality. To get the full show, eclipse chasers should go north to St. Joseph, almost 90 percent white and about 6 percent black, the place where Jesse James died and where Marshall Mathers, a.k.a. Eminem, was born.

Alice Ristroph then complains about how the eclipse exits and continues over the Atlantic Ocean. “After Tennessee, the shadow regains some speed and travels over white people only again for a while. It catches the northeast corner of Georgia and the western tip of North Carolina. Though both these states have substantial black populations, both also include overwhelmingly white rural areas, and it is those areas that lie in the path of totality.”

Ristroph concludes that America is a nation with such severe sin that it can never be forgiven. “The Great American Eclipse illuminates, or darkens, a land still segregated, a land still in search of equality, a land of people still trying to dominate each other. When the lovely glow of a backlight fades, history is relentless, just one damn fact after another, one damning fact after another. America is a nation with debts that no honest man can pay. It is too much to ask that these debts simply be forgiven.”

This is what the mind of a race-baiting Marxist produces. America’s sins define everything. Forget about all the good America brings to the world. It doesn’t matter what the country does to heal, people like Alice Ristroph will never be satisfied.

Photo of author
Cristina began writing for The Gateway Pundit in 2016 and she is now the Associate Editor.

You can email Cristina Laila here, and read more of Cristina Laila's articles here.

 

Thanks for sharing!