Momma, here come that woman again!

The Political Party What Keeps Crying "Voter Fraud"

2012-01-30T15:08:00.000-05:00

UPDATE II:Free Times has confirmed that the six names examined by the State Election Commission came from the list SLED is investigating.

Yeah, that's the 2nd update. Can you imagine the first update and the original story? It all boils down to this: despite all evidence to the contrary, Republicans insist on crying voter fraud in order justify voter suppression. That's all it is and will ever be.

And while we're at it, let's scrap this whole "save taxpayers' money" meme, too. After all, the US DoJ used Provision 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act to block the law, and fighting the DoJ on this issue, especially since SC is hiring a private attorney at $520 an hour, is estimated to cost $1million.

And to add insult to injury, SC Gov. Nikki Haley (R) is raising the banner of "10th Amendment rights"! What the what?! Just in case you didn't know, this is why minorities, especially black folks, don't hop on the whole "states' rights" and "local government" bandwagon.

Answer: Number of Years Black Americans Have Actually Been Free

2012-01-27T18:10:00.002-05:00

Question: What is 47?

Read more here: Racial Jeopardy and American Politics
by Lisa Sharon Harper

You vs James Crowe, II and Poll Taxes v2.0

2011-12-09T12:17:00.001-05:00

You wanna do more than sign an online petition? (Not hating on online petitions. I signed it.) You live near NYC? Here's something you can do:

December 10: Stand For Freedom March in NYC

This year, two-thirds of state legislatures have introduced laws that undermine the right to vote. Early voting and Sunday voting are under attack, photo ID requirements will introduce the first financial and document barrier to voting since the poll tax, and racially-motivated bans on ex-felons will wipe tens of thousands off the rolls
.
This effort is unprecedented, it is coordinated, and it is targeted. African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, students, working women, seniors and immigrants of all colors will be disproportionately affected.

The right to vote is the heart of our democracy. Throughout our history Americans have been murdered for defending this basic human right. We will not let it be taken away from millions today.

Join us on Saturday, December 10th—The United Nations’ Human Rights Day—to proclaim to America and the world:

It’s time to Stand for Freedom. We must protect our right to vote.

Assembly and March Information
10:30 am to 11:30 am: assemble 61st St. and Madison Ave., the Koch brothers' NYC office.
11:30 am: March from 61st St. and Madison Ave. to Dag Hammarskjold Plaza at 47th St. and 2nd Ave.
12:30 pm: Rally at Dag Hammarskjold Plaza across from the United Nations.
**For additional details about the December 10 rally, please visit our Stand For Freedom Logistics page.

Stop Corporate Funded Voter Suppression (Updated)

2011-12-08T22:50:00.001-05:00

Update (h/t Credo Mobile - That's their Facebook page.) -

Advocates: Companies can’t support black consumers and those pushing restrictive voting laws

An online advocacy group is urging corporations that market to African-Americans to stop giving money to a conservative organization working for stricter voting laws.The group, ColorofChange, is targeting companies that support the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC, a nonprofit that has helped states pass photo ID laws, which are criticized by minority and civil rights groups. Its members include legislators and corporations, who pay higher fees to join.

This is really important.

via Color of Change

For years, the right wing has been trying to stop Black people, other people of color, young people, and the elderly from voting — and now some of America’s biggest companies are helping them do it. These companies have helped pass discriminatory voter ID legislation by funding a right wing policy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).

ALEC’s voter ID laws are undemocratic, unjust and part of a longstanding right wing agenda to weaken the Black vote. Major companies that rely on business from Black folks shouldn’t be involved in suppressing our vote. Please join us in demanding that these companies stop funding ALEC.

Here's the letter we'll send to the leadership of corporations that support ALEC, on your behalf. You can add a personal comment using the box to the right.*

Dear President/CEO and Board,

I want to alert you to the fact that the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) – which your company funds – is pushing discriminatory voter ID legislation that suppresses the votes of blacks, the elderly, youth and other minorities. Bills based on ALEC’s model legislation have been introduced in 34 states, and have already passed in seven states.

Although proponents of voter ID laws claim the goal is to reduce voter fraud, there is no evidence that such fraud occurs with any regularity in this country. What is clear is that these voter ID laws unreasonably increase barriers to voting access for large numbers of people and could disenfranchise up to 5 million people across the nation. These laws are part of a long history of racist and discriminatory restrictions on voting designed to disenfranchise African Americans and other underrepresented groups.

I presume your company does not want to support voter suppression, nor have your products or services associated with discrimination and large-scale voter disenfranchisement. I urge you to immediately stop funding ALEC and issue a public statement making it clear that your company does not support discriminatory voter ID laws and voter suppression.

Sincerely,

[Your name]

*A comment box is provided on the petition webpage.

Reading, Writing, and Walking Out!

2011-12-02T17:15:00.001-05:00

After the Washington state government proposed in a special legislative session to cut education funding as a way to close a $2 billion budget gap, hundreds of students from Garfield High School walked out of class in protest, the Seattle Post Intelligencerreports.

See what happens when you stop funding education? You start losing R's.

Occupy Your School! What!

2011-11-19T15:27:00.000-05:00

Vanilla ice cream, Cadillac car.
We're not as dumb as you think we is!
-black comedian whose name I can't remember. I would've made that the title, but you can see how long that is.

Bronx Students Occupy Public Education, Release 10-Point Plan

A group of young activists from the Bronx called say they’re being deprived of a quality education, and they’re prepared to fight for something better.

The Resistance, which was formed through a youth arts organization called The DreamYard A.C.T.I.O.N Project, have developed a 10-point education platform for New York City public schools. The group has also launched a Facebook page to support their efforts.

They’re demanding the following reforms:

We demand free quality education as a right guaranteed by the US Constitution.

We demand the dismantling of Bloomberg’s Panel for Educational Policy.

We demand a new 13 member community board to run our public schools (comprised of parents, educators, education experts, community members, and a minimum of 5 student representatives).

We demand quality instruction. Teachers should ethnically, culturally, and racially reflect the student body.

We demand experienced teachers who have a history of teaching students well. Teacher training should be intensive and include an apprenticeship with master teachers as well as experiences with the communities where the school is located.

We demand stronger extra-curricular activities to help stimulate and spark interest in students. Students should have options, opportunities, and choice in their education.We demand a healthy, safe environment that does not expect our failure or anticipate our criminality.

We demand a school culture that acknowledges our humanity (free of metal detectors, untrained and underpaid security guards, and abusive tactics).

We demand that all NYC public school communities foster structured and programmatic community building so that students, teachers, and staff learn in an environment that is respectful and safe for all.

We demand small classes. Class sizes should be humane and productive. We demand that the student to teacher ratio for a mainstream classroom should be no more than 15:1.

We demand student assessments and evaluations that reflect the variety of ways that we learn and think (portfolio assessments, thesis defenses, anecdotal evaluations, written exams). Student success should not depend solely on high stakes testing.

We demand a stop to the attack on our schools. If a school is deemed “failing”, we demand a team of qualified and diverse experts to assess how such schools can improve and the resources to improve them.

We demand fiscal equity for NYC public schools: as stated in the Education Budget and Reform Act of 2007 by the NYS Legislature, NYC public schools have been inadequately and inequitably funded.

We demand the legislatively mandated $7 billion dollars in increased annual state education aid to be delivered to our schools now!

Has Columbus Just Discovered Injustice, Too?

2011-11-15T13:40:00.001-05:00

Yes, it could be that I've spent too much time discussing global capitalism's reliance on racism and the oppression and exploitation of people of color. Organizations and people who advocate for people of color and the poor, like ACORN, have been dismantled, disparaged, and dismissed. The Rev. Jesse Jackson led a march on Wall St as early as December 2007. (Boy, has it catch on!)

But now that the shit has hit the fan, and white unemployment is as high now, during this economic crisis, as black unemployment was low in 2007, you see fit to organize and Occupy Wall St. Now that even you, average white American, can be knocked around - but not shot and killed while handcuffed - by the police, you want to protest police brutality.

Great. Fine. Good. Finally!

But I really, really hope you're not just finding out that people in power can both break the law and use the law against you, are you? Is "today really... the most vivid expression seen in quite some time of the two-tiered justice system . . .; the real criminals are not only shielded from the law’s mandates, but affirmatively use it as an instrument to entrench themselves in power and protect their ill-gotten gains" (emphasis mine)? I guess I can cut Gllen Greenwald some slack. After all, he did qualify his statement with "in quite some time." And he is a civil rights attorney. And since he was talking specifically of NYC . . . well, I guess I can see how people blinded by their own privilege need things spelled out for them.

On the other hand, though, I hope "quite some time" doesn't mean "since the 60s." Cause black folks see a million different variations of this expression everyday. White America will jump through all sort of hoops - some on fire, others electrified - to maintain their privilege. Be it economic, political (as with the new crusade for voter IDs), or simply social. I'm sorry. Maybe I've been spending too much time thinking of the way America's wealth was created by the still unpaid labor of African slaves, but I can't believe the audacity of white America. Or even how so many want to go back to life as it was in the 50s, what with the government underwriting the expansion of the white middle class even as de jure and de facto racism keeps people of color "kettled." All that government assistance, the VA loans, the GI bill scholarships, the USDA loans to farmers - all of that was okay until the dreads 60s, when people of color would be able to get their fair piece of the pie.

It's like nothing really exists, no problem in wealth and income distribution, no problem with police actions, no problem with the status quo being protected even with violence, least of all not major hindrances based on race - none of that is a problem until it happens to a white person. And it's just incredibly frustrating to be vividly ignored.

I mean, once the economic calms down, and white unemployment goes back under 5%, will the Occupiers return to their lives while those of us who've been historically occupied remain to suffer?

"The Help": the True Story

2011-08-22T21:16:00.000-04:00

What is needed is a book by a maid or a group of maids on the white people they work for.

I know, right! I came across this via the sncc listserve:

No thanks Kathryn Stockett, I don't want to be "The Help"

I was a maid in high school. I cleaned white peoples houses on Saturdays and after school. I cleaned, washed and ironed clothes and waxed the kitchen floor for $3.00 and twenty cents, the latter being for bus fare. I came from a family of nine children so this was the only way I could make spending money. There were no fast food places like McDonald's during the fifties for had they existed I would have had a part-time job at one of them to get spending money.

There is nothing glorious about cleaning up after dirty people and nothing like being exploited by people who don't give a damn about you. I have written about this in my memoir that I am almost finished writing. Maids are invisible and their lives are invisible to their white employers. When I was fourteen, I quit a job when the white girl who was my age DEMANDED that I wash her blood stained underwear from her menstrual period. When her mother came home from work she told her that I refused to do so and her Mother lit into me saying I thought I was too good to wash these clothes. Before I left that day I made sure that the pancakes Jo Lee demanded that I make for her included dirty dishwater instead of water or milk, and I fried them with the ring of grease around their nasty kitchen sink instead of lard. Jo Lee praised me for making what she described as the best pancakes she'd ever eaten.

As I stood there and watched her eat, I felt vindicated because I had gotten her back in the only way I felt I could. Had I verbally lashed out at her in a tit for tat her mother could have had me arrested for being uppity or she could have done so on some trumped up charges. It was not inconceivable that her mother could have had some mean men torch our home. I never took pride in what I did but as I held back my salty tears that Saturday morning I couldn't think of any other way to fight back for being called a Nigger and being told that I "had" to wash her soiled underwear. "Who do you think you are?" she had demanded. "You think you too good to wash my clothes? You're just a Nigger!" she shouted. My regret that day was that I couldn't tell her that I had fed her dirty dishwater and grease from the sink.

A year later when Jo Lee and I were fifteen years old , I heard from my neighbor who sent me to work at Jo Lee's home that she had gotten married because she was pregnant. She and her high school drop-out husband were living in a shotgun house in the white people's poor section of town. Can you imagine Jo Lee writing a book about me, my feelings, dreams, thoughts, aspirations and goals? Can you imagine Jo Lee being able to step out of her role of racial superiority long enough to give voice to me and my family? Could Jo Lee ever be interested in where and how I lived, went to school, who my friends were, what we did for recreation, what I studied in school, etc.? Absolutely not. The culture did not allow for a bi-lateral relationship in which this could have occurred. Therefore, how can Kathryn Stockett get inside the head of her characters and truly understand them except from her unilateral and imaginary perspective? She said as much when she said she didn't know anything about her family's maid outside the work environment when she was growing up, and she didn't question it.

It was a rare white employer who had enough humane interest to know the backgrounds and interests of their maids and other black employees. My grandmother was a case in point. For as long as I can remember she worked for a white family. They owned a furniture store. The woman stayed at home and the man operated the furniture store. My grandmother cooked, cleaned, and raised their son and daughter. I was so humiliated as a child when my grandmother went to the daughter's wedding and was seated alone in the balcony. She bought a new dress, hat, purse, shoes and gloves for this occasion and was as proud as a biological mother because she had been the mother to these two children--Joann and Johnny. I remember telling her that I was going to college so I wouldn't have to be a maid. I loved my grandmother very much and I respected her. She was a kind, decent, caring and giving woman to all of us kids and to everyone else.

But my grandmother was stuck in the role of maid because that was the only kind of work she could get. She made $3.00 a day plus bus fare. I was astounded to learn that from this small salary she saved enough money for my cousin that she raised to attend nursing school at Dillard in New Orleans. My grandmother was very disappointed and sad when my cousin chose marriage over college. You see, my grandmother wanted my cousin to achieve what she hadn't been able to accomplish. She wanted to have the vicarious satisfaction of achievement and she wanted my cousin to have a better life than her own. I always regretted that she was denied this because of my cousin's personal choice. So many of our forebears sacrificed so that we could be nurses and teachers instead of maids. Which brings me back to Jo Lee and her racist mother, who called me a Nigger when she got home from work because Jo Lee told her I refused to wash her underwear. She threatened to fire me but that was unnecessary because I had no intention of going back to that job. Although their words stung but didn't break me. I knew I was not a Nigger and I knew that they were one step up from being poor white trash even though the mother was a secretary for a lawyer. She was also his paramour. If anything, their actions caused me to have a stronger resolve to go to college so that I would not have to be a maid.

As I read Kathryn Stockett's book, I was reminded that I knew a lot about Jo Lee and her divorced mother and they knew nothing about me because their white skin privilege made them view me as invisible, a non entity, and if they had to consider me at all, they saw me as inferior, as a nobody. All the maids I knew were familiar with the intimate details of the families for whom they worked. This has been the case since slavery when black women worked in the houses of white people....cooked, cleaned their houses, wet nursed their babies...then their employers turned around and called them dirty and lazy. How can you entrust someone with cooking your food and raising your children and then, like a schizophrenic, make a 180 degree turn and look on them as inferior, alien, and not worthy of knowing anything about them, or humanizing them? This is the history of black people in America... it is the history of black domestic workers. It is why my father told my mother that she would never work for white people. He saw how his mother's employers tried to dehumanize her by commission and omission.

What is needed is a book by a maid or a group of maids on the white people they work for. Now that's a book that would probably be a lot more accurate and insightful, and the dialect would be correct too. Every time I read one of Kathryn Stockett's "I'm on" instead of Imma, or I'm gonna" I got irritated. I hated it when she spelled "Eula Mae" as "Yule Mae". I got downright angry when she described the husbands of at least three maids as no count men who had gone off and left their families. At the same time, the white men in Stockett's world aren't absent or "no count" because they have professional jobs, leisure time, and they have enough money to build separate toilets for their maids. God forbid that a black maid who cooks their food would ever be allowed to use the same toilet the white people use. I guess this explains the fixation segregationists had with toilets.... for in so many public places there were four. One each for black women, black men, white women, and white men. It's no wonder they didn't have money for libraries and good schools. It was all spent making sure that no black person would ever sit on the same toilet a white behind had graced.

I have thought about my conflict with Jo Lee over the years. I have never taken pride in watching her eat pancakes made with dirty dishwater. It was not my finest young hour but racism had a way of dehumanizing everyone. In the absence of racism she and I could have been equals and friends. But discrimination allowed me to be exploited and her to behave in the worst way. I was too young to be a maid and she was too young to be giving me orders. Kathryn Stockett didn't deal with the dirty and raw outcome of discrimination. The people who populate her book and movie are viewed through rose colored glasses where everyone gets along.

Stockett's book has sold millions of copies and made her a very wealthy woman. The movie will make her even more wealthy and will bring her greater status. However, Hollywood would never have given this opportunity to a black author who wrote about black maids in white households especially in the turbulent South during the struggle for civil rights. Moreover, there is no reason to rejoice in the good old times black servants and white employers. The national marketing frenzy for The Help movie has gone wild. It even includes a full day of marketing products on the Home Shopping Network (HSN). The New Orleans chef Emeril has a new line of cooking pots and pans in honor of The Help. Think of how silly this is: to celebrate maid-ing and maid-hood when women made $3.00 a day toiling over pots and pans on hot stoves. No thanks Miz Stockett. I refuse to go back there.

An Open Letter to Fans of The Help (Updated)

2011-08-13T01:24:00.002-04:00

Update - Here's another explanation of how I feel: “The Help,” a feel-good movie for white people.

Like the novel on which it’s based, the movie adaptation of “The Help” will likely be a huge hit with white audiences. But for black viewers it is condescending and frequently insulting, despite admirable performances by Davis and Spencer, who bring a measure of complexity — actual flesh and blood — to the characters of Aibileen and Minny. It speaks volumes about the ongoing racial chasm in this country that a feel-good movie for white people will leave many black filmgoers feeling sad — and pessimistic that America can ever become anything more than “a nation of cowards.”

Thank you, Valerie Boyd.

h/t Portside, which shared this link: Black Female Historians Slam 'The Help.'

Uh, yeah. At first, I didn't care to see the movie because I've had my fill of white savior movies and black stories being told by whites. But now that I think about it, I took "Black women's history" sophomore year at university. The Help is not what I learned.

Oh, and by the by, I'm a black woman and historian, too! I'm going to see about joining this association, the Association of Black Women Historians. Here's their statement:

An Open Statement to the Fans of The Help:
On behalf of the Association of Black Women Historians (ABWH), this statement provides historical context to address widespread stereotyping presented in both the film and novel version of The Help. The book has sold over three million copies, and heavy promotion of the movie will ensure its success at the box office. Despite efforts to market the book and the film as a progressive story of triumph over racial injustice, The Help distorts, ignores, and trivializes the experiences of black domestic workers. We are specifically concerned about the representations of black life and the lack of attention given to sexual harassment and civil rights activism.

During the 1960s, the era covered in The Help, legal segregation and economic inequalities limited black women's employment opportunities. Up to 90 per cent of working black women in the South labored as domestic servants in white homes. The Help’s representation of these women is a disappointing resurrection of Mammy—a mythical stereotype of black women who were compelled, either by slavery or segregation, to serve white families. Portrayed as asexual, loyal, and contented caretakers of whites, the caricature of Mammy allowed mainstream America to ignore the systemic racism that bound black women to back-breaking, low paying jobs where employers routinely exploited them. The popularity of this most recent iteration is troubling because it reveals a contemporary nostalgia for the days when a black woman could only hope to clean the White House rather than reside in it.

Both versions of The Help also misrepresent African American speech and culture. Set in the South, the appropriate regional accent gives way to a child-like, over-exaggerated “black” dialect. In the film, for example, the primary character, Aibileen, reassures a young white child that, “You is smat, you is kind, you is important.” In the book, black women refer to the Lord as the “Law,” an irreverent depiction of black vernacular. For centuries, black women and men have drawn strength from their community institutions. The black family, in particular provided support and the validation of personhood necessary to stand against adversity. We do not recognize the black community described in The Help where most of the black male characters are depicted as drunkards, abusive, or absent. Such distorted images are misleading and do not represent the historical realities of black masculinity and manhood.

Furthermore, African American domestic workers often suffered sexual harassment as well as physical and verbal abuse in the homes of white employers. For example, a recently discovered letter written by Civil Rights activist Rosa Parks indicates that she, like many black domestic workers, lived under the threat and sometimes reality of sexual assault. The film, on the other hand, makes light of black women’s fears and vulnerabilities turning them into moments of comic relief.

Similarly, the film is woefully silent on the rich and vibrant history of black Civil Rights activists in Mississippi. Granted, the assassination of Medgar Evers, the first Mississippi based field secretary of the NAACP, gets some attention. However, Evers’ assassination sends Jackson’s black community frantically scurrying into the streets in utter chaos and disorganized confusion—a far cry from the courage demonstrated by the black men and women who continued his fight. Portraying the most dangerous racists in 1960s Mississippi as a group of attractive, well dressed, society women, while ignoring the reign of terror perpetuated by the Ku Klux Klan and the White Citizens Council, limits racial injustice to individual acts of meanness.

We respect the stellar performances of the African American actresses in this film. Indeed, this statement is in no way a criticism of their talent. It is, however, an attempt to provide context for this popular rendition of black life in the Jim Crow South. In the end, The Help is not a story about the millions of hardworking and dignified black women who labored in white homes to support their families and communities. Rather, it is the coming-of-age story of a white protagonist, who uses myths about the lives of black women to make sense of her own. The Association of Black Women Historians finds it unacceptable for either this book or this film to strip black women’s lives of historical accuracy for the sake of entertainment.

Ida E. Jones is National Director of ABWH and Assistant Curator at Howard University. Daina Ramey Berry, Tiffany M. Gill, and Kali Nicole Gross are Lifetime Members of ABWH and Associate Professors at the University of Texas at Austin. Janice Sumler-Edmond is a Lifetime Member of ABWH and is a Professor at Huston-Tillotson University.

Suggested Reading:
Fiction:
Like one of the Family: Conversations from A Domestic’s Life, Alice Childress
The Book of the Night Women by Marlon James
Blanche on the Lam by Barbara Neeley
The Street by Ann Petry
A Million Nightingales by Susan Straight

Non-Fiction:
Out of the House of Bondage: The Transformation of the Plantation Household by Thavolia Glymph
To Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors by Tera Hunter
Labor of Love Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present by Jacqueline Jones
Living In, Living Out: African American Domestics and the Great Migration by Elizabeth Clark-Lewis
Coming of Age in Mississippi by Anne Moody

Any questions, comments, or interview requests can be sent to: ABWHTheHelp@gmail.com

Oh, yeah! Wells-Fargo Under Investigation

2011-07-28T19:55:00.000-04:00

I was dejected the other day after learning that the wealth gap between blacks and whites has widened. With the whole, ignorant debt-ceiling debate, I just wasn't in the mood for bad news.

But finding out Wells-Fargo is indeed being investigated for steering minority customer towards sub-prime loans, even if they qualified for prime rates. It's no secret that the black community has lost billions in wealth due to the bursting of the housing bubble. And Wells has already had to settle with the Federal Reserve. And this isn't the only bank involved in unscrupulous behavior. But learning that the government is gonna do something about this is . . . well, heartening.

The Civil War (A Photo Diary)

2011-05-31T18:33:00.003-04:00

You really have to check out this link:

Extra, Extra! It's Not So Bad When White People Do It

2011-05-30T12:54:00.001-04:00

Here what you need to know:

Upper classes are marrying late, while poorer women are deciding that they’re better off single.

You can read the article analyzing a recent Census report yourself. But the basic gist is this: due to a changing economy, middle- and upper-class individuals are marrying later than before while working- and lower-class singles may not marry at all.

It's good that people are marrying later, and indeed, the divorce rate has gone down. These are people who're taking the time to establish themselves financially before marriage and children.

The changes of the last quarter century indicate that marriage is increasingly becoming a marker of class — the delayed marriages of the middle class produce steadily lower divorce rates, very few non-marital births, and substantial resources to invest in a falling number of children. For the rest of the country, the statistics may simply confirm a greater move away from marriage altogether.

What about everybody else? The working- and lower-classes?

Working class women, however, have become more likely to have children without marrying. If the father is chronically unemployed, uncommitted to the relationship, immature or simply unreliable, young mothers may decide that they are better off on their own.

So why am I bringing this up in the context of race? Well, arou nd 25% of African Americans live in poverty. Only 10% of us have an annual income over $75,000. Let's throw-in the high rate of downward mobility and the unconscionably high rate of incarceration for black me, and you begin to get the picture.

Bear in mind, now, that rates of drug and alcohol abuse are just about the same across each US ethnic group. Moreover, once you hold for socioeconomic status, crime rates are also equal. So the rate at which black men are imprisoned has more to do with racism throughout the justice system than with black criminality.

But I digress. Everyone's alarmed at the ridiculously high-rate of out-of-wedlock births in the black community. That said, let's be clear that racism is the only reason everybody even knows of the high rate of out-of-wedlock births. Otherwise, just like everything else in black America, it'd be invisible to everybody else. But when you look at all the factors, there's really no reason to be. Having children without being married has more to do with economic opportunity, among other things, than it has to do with, say, the sexual habits of black Americans. If you put us in the same position as whites where it concerns the quality of education, generational wealth accumulation, job and career networks, etc, you'd see us doing the same thing: marrying later, and waiting until marriage to have kids.

Are you still with me? Everything making sense so far?

When we set race aside, we see that when people get married and whether they've waited to have children has everything to do with the economy and people's financial outlook. That includes African Americans. We're making decisions based on the economy and our financial outlook. We're not less wise or more sexually immoral than white Americans or anybody else. The problem has to do with unemployment rates, incarceration rates, income, wealth, etc. So consider those numbers in the context of race, right? Regardless of education level, we have higher unemployment rates. Due to racism, both past and present, we have higher incarcerations rates; discrimination in income and promotions; just about 10% of the wealth of whites with similar incomes; I could go on.

So. To boil it down, why're so few black people getting married and so many having children? Racism.

Why did you know about it prior to reading this post? Racism.

Why is it than when similar trends begin to emerge in mainstream America . . . That is to say, why is it that before you realize similar trends among white Americans, already researchers blame the economy? Why is the title of the article that inspired the post, "Changing Marriage Patterns Reflect Economics and Class"? (Yes, that's grammatically incorrect, but I want us to be clear on what we're talking about.) Why is it that no one's talking about white America as though they have some "problem?" Racism.

Racism. Racism. Racism.

Black America has no problem that an end to racism would solve.

Uh, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup, bup!! Before you even go there, is that what I said?

Don't get me wrong. Individual choice plays a huge part in this. But tell me this: why should black individuals have to be any less human than individuals of other racial and ethnic groups?

Again, don't get me wrong, cause a lot of self-proclaimed white anti-racists like to indulge racist thinking, I'm not saying we're unable to tighten our belts, as it were. Nor am I saying we can afford the status quo. What I am saying is simply that we shouldn't have to.

And by the way, for those of you who like to argue that you're white and never got any "privilege," let me help you understand what we mean by white privilege, okay? White privilege is having your changes in marriage rates and your increases in out-of-wedlock births explained by changes in the economy rather than pointed out as a "problem." I mean, of course, there are more concrete example, such as a spike in teen pregnancy being attributed to a "pact" rather than community dysfunction, but you get my point?

When white people do, it's actually understandable.

Douthat, Really?

2011-04-30T22:51:00.001-04:00

h/t portside:

Carl Bloice starts his blackcommentator column like this (I got it via portside):

On April 17, conservative columnist Ross Douthat wrote on the opinion page of the August New York Times:
Historically, the most successful welfare states (think Scandinavia) have depended on ethnic solidarity to sustain their tax-and-transfer programs. But the working-age America of the future will be far more diverse than the retired cohort it's laboring to support. Asking a population that's increasingly brown and beige to accept punishing tax rates while white seniors receive roughly $3 in Medicare benefits for every dollar they paid in (the projected ratio in the 2030s) promises to polarize the country along racial as well as generational lines.

I'm not a Douthat reader, and I've been trying to avoid overdoing politics again. My nerves can only take so much stupidity. But the title of Bloice's, "Beware of the Racial Demagoguery & the "Middle Ground," caught my attention. I couldn't finish his take before letting out my on aggression.

First of all, Douthat's right that the more homogonous a country is, the easier it is to pass social programs. Think of this - everything was going fine with America's social safety net, labor, and even the tax system right up until the social movements of the 60s and 70s. Then, the white South abandon the Democrats, joined, the Republicans, and have been refusing to pay for "welfare queens" every since. That is no coincidence.

Second and most importantly, isn't this country, one of the most racially and ethnically diverse in the world, already racially polarized? Nothing new is gonna happen by the 2030s. So I can't believe he had the audacity to come accusing future workers of color of racism. Like white folks ain't racist - just people of color? As though a whole bunch white folks ain't right now trying to undo the FDR's New Deal. As though white folks haven't been alleging that "taxes = white slavery."

Where has he been? I mean, is he serious with this? Aren't people of color the base of the Democratic party? The ones trying to keep and strengthen the social safety net?

I really wanna scream!

Rose vs Hill? Nigg*r Please!

2011-03-22T15:34:00.000-04:00

Believe you me, I made sure to understand what both Jalen Rose and Grant Hill said and had to say before launching into the deep end of this pool myself. And first, let me say that Grant got it all wrong. Jalen was not disparaging black kids from two-parent homes. The tale-end of Jalen's comments explain his thoughts quite nicely: ". . . I looked at it as they are who the world accepts and we are who the world hates." It's not coming from a two-parent home that Jalen disparaged. As I've explained here (and other places), what's at issue isn't one's fidelity to certain standards of blackness; the issue is one's fidelity to equality for all blacks and not just the acceptable ones. Don't sweat it, I'll explain it again soon at some point.

Cause that's not the point.

Here's the point. There's a point in the documentary where they discuss all the racist hate mail they received. Even some Michigan alum were livid and ashamed that Coach Steve Fisher, now with San Diego State, had dared to start five "niggers." Apparently, that just wasn't the Michigan way.

So why exactly is the "Uncle Tom" comment more important than all the hate mail they received . . . in the 1990s! I'll tell you. It's "important" because it served as another avenue for whites to avoid self-examination and focus on perceived problem within the black community.

To wit, I call bullshit!!

White folks would do well to stop being such cowards and start facing their own demons. Cause until you address your issues, white America, race will be an issue.

So Slavery is "The S-Word" Now

2011-03-16T22:25:00.000-04:00

And to all y'all who complain that (white people) paying taxes is equivalent to slavery, I say this: at least your dumb ass can vote. You do have some control over the situation. Not unlike the control Lebron James (even though I'm not a Prince J fan) and Carmelo Anthony (of whom I am a fan) took this past year. Have no misconception of confusion about it, I'm 100% for the NFL union. And Wisconsin's AFSCME, too, for that matter!

Dumb ass.

It’s a league where collegiate players hoping to be drafted show up to the NFL combine to be poked, prodded and have various body parts judged and measured. Teams basically do everything short of having someone run their finger along the players’ gums.

Oh! And I agree with Jalen Rose, too. I first heard of black Duke ball players being called "uncle toms" from a professor who had attended Duke as an undergrad. It has nothing to do with their living in two-parent homes or anything else so superficial to the issue. My professor pointed out the servile-like acquiescence black players, and even some white players, displayed towards Coach K. So get off that, too, white sports fans.

Slaves to the Game? Adrian Peterson and the 'S' Word
Dave Zirin | March 16, 2011

Adrian Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings All-Pro running back, “went there,” and now there’s no going back. In a moment of supreme frustration with NFL owners and their lust for the lockout, Peterson said, “It’s modern-day slavery, you know? [1]”

For sportswriters inclined to cozy up to Commissioner Roger Goodell, Peterson’s words were manna from heaven. He’s been called “ungrateful,” “out of touch,” “an idiot” and, in the darker recesses of the blogosphere, far worse. Even those inclined to openly sympathize with the players have stated their “great offense” that Peterson could liken his situation to the horrors of chattel slavery. As Jamil Smith, a very righteous producer at the Rachel Maddow Show, tweeted to me, “I want to hear Adrian Peterson [2] out. I just need him to know that using ‘slavery’ makes it harder for me to hear him.” Fellow players, Ryan Grant and Heath Evans, also took exception, with Grant calling it “a very misinformed statement [3].”

It’s not difficult to understand why some are crushing Adrian Peterson for likening his glamorized career to “modern-day slavery.” But all the criticism in the world doesn’t explain why the metaphor would cross his mind in the first place. It doesn’t explain why other athletes—Curt Flood, Larry Johnson and Warren Sapp among them—have reached to this explosive analogy as a way to articulate their frustrations.

At least two books have already been written that explore this concept: 40 Million Dollar Slaves, by NY Times columnist William Rhoden, and The Slave Side of Sunday, by former NFL player Anthony Prior. Both are stunning testaments to the fact that there is more here than meets the eye. Even if we are repelled by Peterson’s choice of words, it’s worth putting down the torches and trying to understand why this is the analogy that just won’t die, especially in the world of pro football.

To be an African American NFL player is to play in a league where 70% of the players are black and 100% of the owners are white. It’s a league where only 3 percent of head coaches were black until the famous (or infamous) lawyer Johnnie Cochran threatened a mass class-action lawsuit, saying he would “litigate if they do not integrate.” It’s a league where collegiate players hoping to be drafted show up to the NFL combine to be poked, prodded and have various body parts judged and measured. Teams basically do everything short of having someone run their finger along the players’ gums. If you are lucky enough to make the league, you will be blessed with a career that will, on average, last 3.4 years, and cursed with a life expectancy twenty-two years shorter than that of the typical American male. [4] Your contract isn’t guaranteed, so if you do sustain some horrific injury, you are officially yesterday’s trash.

I interviewed former NFL player and Slave Side of Sunday author Anthony Prior several years ago, and this is what he said about the player as slave metaphor: “Black players have created a billion-dollar market but have no voice in the industry, no power. That sounds an awful lot like slavery to me. On plantations slaves were respected for their physical skills but were given no respect as thinking beings. On the football field, we are treated as what appears like gods, but in fact this is just the ‘show and tell’ of the management for their spectators. In reality, what is transpiring is that black athletes are being treated with disrespect and degradation. As soon as we take off that uniform, behind the dressing room doors, we are less than human. We are bought and sold. Traded and drafted, like our ancestors, and the public views this as a sport, ironically the same attitude as people had in the slavery era.”

Prior contended that coaches and other authority figures in the game use racism to bully African-American players in an effort to instill obedience. “I’ve heard coaches call players ‘boy,’ ‘porch monkeys,”sambos,’ ” he said. “Players don’t get tested on their athleticism as much as they get tested on their manhood.

“The intimidation is immense…. I’ve seen players benched because a coach saw them with a white woman, or overheard a criticism of his incompetence, or because a player didn’t go to Bible study. I’ve been in film sessions where coaches would try to get a rise out of players by calling them ‘boy’ or ‘Jemima,’ and players are so conditioned to not jeopardize their place, they just take it.”

What is so bracing about this moment in NFL history is that players aren’t “just taking it” anymore. Attacking Adrian Peterson for using “the s word” is pure distraction from what’s taking place in front of our eyes. Players are demanding to see the owners’ financial ledgers, to choose their own doctors and, for the first time in NFL history, to be treated like fully grown men. It’s remarkable that these twenty-first-century gladiators are praised by the media when they show so-called “manhood” on the field by playing through pain, but derided when they refuse to be treated like children.

Curt Flood, who by 1971 had sacrificed his all-star career in the fight for free agency, once said, “A well-paid slave is nonetheless a slave.” He was excoriated for that statement and inexcusably run out of his sport. Hopefully we can do a little better this time around. Hopefully we can hear the frustration beneath the words.

Like this blog post? Read it on The Nation’s free iPhone App, NationNow. [5]
Source URL: http://www.thenation.com/blog/159259/slaves-game-adrian-peterson-and-%E2%80%9Cs%E2%80%9D-wordLinks:[1] http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Adrian-Peterson-expresses-frustration-on-labor-i?urn=nfl-wp206
[2] http://twitter.com/AdrianPeterson
[3] http://sports.yahoo.com/nfl/blog/shutdown_corner/post/Ryan-Grant-Heath-Evans-take-issue-with-Peterson?urn=nfl-wp241
[4] http://www.sptimes.com/2006/01/29/Sports/A_huge_problem.shtml
[5] http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/nationnow/id399704758?mt=8

Defending the Dream

2011-03-14T16:53:00.000-04:00

Just remember, the full name of the 1963 event was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Dr. King was in Memphis to support the AFSCME Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike.

Defend the Dream Action
Republicans in Congress are holding the middle class hostage—proposing a federal budget that would would cut 700,000 to 1 million jobs from our communities and slash funding to support preschool and college students, pregnant women, unemployed workers, and much more. This isn't a budget, it's a slap in the face to the public workers, services, and institutions making the American Dream possible. We have until the March 18 budget deadline to push Congress in another direction.

So after work on Tuesday, March 15, we're mobilizing Defend the Dream events in all 50 states at our schools, libraries, fire stations, hospitals, and parks to stand up against Republican attacks. If we can mobilize thousands of people again for a national day of action before the March 18 deadline, we'll give progressive fighters in Congress a better chance to stave off cuts and pass a budget that invests in the Dream. We'll show our support for the public workers, services, and institutions making a difference in our lives—but we'll also make sure that Congress knows we'll hold them accountable for their vote.

Host your own Defend the Dream Action or sign up for an event near you.

Prosperity Gospel?

2011-03-14T01:31:00.000-04:00

If this is prosperity gospel, then let's all prosper. Now I understand most folks are concerned with Japan, and rightly so. If I were watching the news as much as I have in months pass, I'd be all over it myself. But, I've been sitting on this clip of Pastor Joel Osteen for a week now, and this is as good a time as any to go ahead and publish this post.

Before I do, though, a few words. Now of course, the issue of race in the US goes beyond individuals. It's societal, structural, cultural, I could go on.

And of course, racism among blacks ain't the issue. We aren't anti-white nearly as much as whites would like to think. And even if we were, there's not enough of us to form some sort of "ebony" ceiling.

That said, a society is only a collection, however large, of individuals. For any particular -ism to exist, something has to be going on fundamentally at the individual level. In my experience, one obstacle preventing an end to racism is white US-Americans' refusal to do any self-examination, collectively or individually. To wit, Joel Osteen's message is one that should be heard across the country.

Gone Fishin'!

2011-01-25T19:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, no, I haven't gone fishing. But . . . I don't know. I just need a break. I invite you to check out my archives. My analysis is rarely limited to the day's news, so I'm sure you'll find something you like.

I'll be back as soon as I can.

This Is Someone's Dream

2011-01-17T15:26:00.000-05:00

I've been on . . . a break of sorts. Trying to restore my "che." But, Tim Wise is always worth a read.

Tim Wise: We Twisted King’s Dream, So We Live With His Nightmare - COLORLINES

"If you're not watching, you're losing!"

2011-01-09T15:28:00.000-05:00

I feel soooo appreciated.

Actually, I considered that as a post title. Others in consideration for post title:

Suck CW! I'm with BET, Now!
Check Me on the "Ones!" (Cause, you know, THE GAME premieres 1/11/11 at 10p.)
Don't Hate "The Game," Baby

I decided against "Suck CW!" cause I thought it was too crude.

What's most exciting is that that's not all folks!

The new show "Let's Stay Together" premieres same day, same channel at 11p.

And the second season of "Love That Girl" premieres tomorrow, Monday the 10th, at 9p on TVOne.

Barbour Did the Right Thing . . . Kinda

2010-12-31T09:28:00.000-05:00

Kinda. He suspended the sentences of Gladys and Jamie Scott, the two sisters who were each given double life sentences over $11. I'm glad they're free and going home. You can sign a "welcome home" card here with the NAACP.

Suspended sentences.

And, Gladys Scott's release is contingent on giving a kidney to her sister, Jamie, who requires daily dialysis. What the . . .

But I'm happy for the sisters and the family. Not impressed by Barbour. By happy for the sisters.

See, he thinks everybody in prison deserves to be there. But not everybody poses a threat to society. And since the sisters aren't "threats to society," society shouldn't pay the $190,000 for Jamie's dialysis or kidney transplant.

Man! At least George W Bush came across as dumb.

The Revolution Will Be Taught, Part I

2010-12-30T14:22:00.001-05:00

The importance of teaching accurate history cannot be overemphasized. It gives children a proper sense of their selves and their communities. What Texas, and Arizona by the way, did to the textbook standards of their soft subjects in racist, egregious, and just plain wrong. Texas's partisan state board of education put forth standards propograting a racist and inaccurate history. I found that insulting as well as disappointing.

So hearing that the NAACP and LULAC are joining forces against Texas’s SBOE gave me incredible pleasure. (h/t Joe @ racismreview):

The Texas NAACP, Texas LULAC and Texas Association of Black Personnel in Higher Education (TABPHE) are holding a press conference, with partnering groups to announce the filing of a request for a proactive review by the U.S. Department of Education and its Civil rights division. The request addresses many aspects of discrimination against minority public school students in Texas, including recent changes to history and educational standards in social studies. Texas State NAACP President and National Board Member Gary Bledsoe said, “Education remains the most critical element in the long term economic and social interests of all American citizens. Reasonable people of good will must guarantee that all students, regardless of race or economic circumstances, be given the tools needed to become successful in a rapidly changing global economy. We must also be held to a high standard of accuracy in conveying historical events to students who will use this information to compete for educational access not only in Texas, but increasingly around the country and world. We must not allow the use of our compulsory education system to misinform and negatively impact the academic capacity of our most important natural resource – our children. Our action today seeks on objective review of the partisan attack on the public education system in the State of Texas.”

State LULAC President Joey Cardenas said, “We were shocked at the actions by the State Board of Education in emasculating our history. It is necessary for our own well-being and that of the people of our State that we do all that we can to ensure that what they have done does not end up being a reality. Our State and nation will suffer from what they have done and emotionally and psychologically it will greatly harm our young people. Dr. Rod Fluker of TABPHE said that one of the things we are most worried about is how this will impact teachers and the kinds of attitudes it will bring to our next generation of young people to move into this field. This is a serious problem.” Bledsoe said that one thing we are looking for is to invalidate the standards so that they do not become a reality. “This is like a criminal assault. The message is that you have no worth. We cannot let this become official policy.” Cardenas added that “we have engaged the State in litigation before and will do so again if necessary.

“In challenging the Standards, the Texas NAACP wishes to applaud State Board of Education Members Lawrence Allen and Mavis Knight for supporting us in this initiative. Dr. Felicia Scott of TABPHE said that it is important to note that the most offensive items were opposed by all 5 minority Board members who voted as a block, “that really says something about how offensive these matters are, and this is from a purely academic and humanistic perspective with no injection of politics.”

I'll share more of my thoughts later. For now, Professor Kevin Michael Foster, a graduate faculty member in the Departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, and Educational Administration, says this (email reprinted with his permission):

Subject Line: Supplemental strategies in light of noxious social studies standards

Greetings all,
On the tail of the complaint [by the NAACP and LULAC] to the Dept of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, I can’t help but again express my thorough frustration with the social studies knowledge (and dispositions) among the Texas-taught undergraduate students I work with at UT Austin. Encouraged by Board Member Knight’s interest in what is taught elsewhere, I’d also like to think about multiple strategies — a program of activities — to see to the good sense education of Texas school children regardless of the “standards” that we end up with.

Joe Feagin alluded to a reality that several of us experience on the collegiate level. My general experience is that the miseducation of high achieving students in Texas is thorough — not simply that they have been undereducated, but that they have been and are systematically miseducated in the sense used by Carter G. Woodson. Black and non-black, Hispanic and non-Hispanic, huge numbers across demographic groups doubt the intelligence and worth of non-whites as students as UT. It is especially painful to see Black and Brown kids who finished in the top ten percent of their high school classes yet come to UT with doubts about their own intelligence and worth. They have been taught the glories of The Alamo and Texas Independence with no context to bring out (for instance) the historic role of the slavery issue in the region. In defiance of the historical record and decades of historical analyses, they are taught that the Civil War was about “state’s rights” and not really about slavery (as if in this context those two were separable). They are taught that Affirmative Action is among the greatest unfairnesses today — a red herring of the first order — especially for settings like UT, where the only meaningful affirmative action that takes place is for student athletes (and in a context where even there it is not done with adherence to the spirit of the original concept).

By contrast, and to Board member Knight’s query, in my youth I was required to read Souls of Black Folk (Du Bois), Up From Slavery (BTW), The Autobiography of Malcolm X, Why We Can’t Wait (MLK), The Autobiography of Ms. Jane Pittman (Gaines), Mules and Men (Zora Hurston), large chunks of The New Negro (Alain Locke, ed) and other texts. During most of those years I lived on Nannie Helen Burroughs Avenue and was expected to know who this important and great woman was as well. Much of my reading was required in school. That which was not required by the school was required by my father and nurtured by my (former schoolteacher & guidance counselor) grandmother. Today we still need both forces — what the approved curriculum standards require and what we as a community require in addition.

As I raise my 10 year old son and 8 year old daughter, I perceive a profound need for a war on multiple fronts. One front is that of the specific Texas Curriculum Standards. And even here, while there is a need for straight on attack (e.g. “complaints” to OCR), there is also space for battle on the flanks (for instance cataloging and publicly rebutting the problems with the standards and providing parents with talking points for conversations with teachers and principals as they ensure that their children aren’t fully subject to the brainwash education).

Another space for action is to actively create and disseminate a supplemental curriculum, one specifically aimed at correcting for the anticipated (and realized) negative consequences of students (of all backgrounds) being taught histories that validate the indefensible, that force classroom discussion into ridiculous directions, and that undermine true knowledge of self and history among African American students, Latino students and others who find their well-informed understandings (or even nascent yet accurate understandings) of themselves and their world under assault. To take just one example,what if students were expected to read and consider Uncle Tom’s Cabin, easily one of the most important books in U.S. History, gigantically influential in its time, for the longest time second in sales only to the Bible, and a text that raises the paradox of having emancipatory goals while simultaneously cementing damaging stereotypes. There is so much to work with in this highly readable text — for history, for literature, for critical thinking — and yet most students have not read it.

In this sad state of affairs I am sure of at least two things: 1) We must act to alter inaccurate standards; and 2) we must in the meantime produce and disseminate viable supplements to counter the damage that the inaccurate standards are doing in the meantime. For those whose official capacities allow it, proaction should not be seen as an option but rather as a responsibility.

With apologies for the rant, but a deep commitment to not stand idly by, I hope that all have a happy season.

-Kevin

Kevin Michael Foster, Ph.D.

Executive Director, ICUSP Phase II
http://www.utexas.edu/diversity/ddce/icusp/

Graduate Faculty Member,
Departments of African and African Diaspora Studies, Curriculum and Instruction, and Educational Administration
University of Texas at Austin

Think Outside the "Man Box"

2010-12-26T21:50:00.000-05:00

A Facebook friend put this up via CNN (There's also video at the link.):

Why men act out against women
By Anthony Porter, Special to CNN

Editor's note: TED is a nonprofit organization devoted to "Ideas worth spreading," which it distributes through talks posted on its website. Anthony Porter is co-founder of "A Call to Men," a national organization addressing domestic and sexual violence prevention and the promotion of healthy manhood.

(CNN) -- It's time for those of us who are good men to start acknowledging the role that male socialization plays in domestic and sexual violence. As good men, we must begin to acknowledge and own our responsibility to be part of the solution to ending violence against women and girls.

What is a good man?

A good man is a man who believes women should be respected. A good man would not assault a woman. A good man believes in equality for women. A good man honors the women in his life. A good man, for all practical purposes, is a nice guy. We believe this to be the majority of men.

There is a minority of men who perpetuate a tremendous amount of violence against women. These men are counting on good men to stay true to rules -- the rules that actually allow them to be who they are in the presence of good men. These rules are what we call the ingredients in the "man box." These rules are also the foundation of how we as men collectively define manhood.

The man box teaches us as men that we must be tough, strong, aggressive and dominating. We are taught not to show feelings and emotions. We are taught that we should be in charge, leaders and protectors. And if we fall short we lose our status and are placed outside the box.

TED.com: Rachel Botsman on the case for collaborative consumption

Outside the box is reserved for women, and for men defined as being less than fully male, or "woman-like". The man box at times can be hypermasculine and extremely homophobic. With that being said, "outside the man box" is a place most men don't want to be. So we find ourselves staying true to the rules of the man box, many times operating from a subconscious place, just on remote control, doing what's natural to us.

We as good men don't realize that every time we tell a boy that he is acting like a girl, we are actually saying that girls are "less than." We all know that a college freshman woman is known on campus as "fresh meat." And while we know that domestic violence is wrong and a crime, it continues to be tolerated in many of our communities.

It is with this understanding that our work, our vision, is not to beat up on good men, but instead to help us understand, through a process of re-education and accountability, that with all of our goodness, we still have been socialized to maintain a system of domination, dehumanization and oppression over women. While we as good men would never hurt women, our collective socialization is the foundation that violence against women is built upon.

TED.com: Sam Martin on the quirky world of "manspaces"

There are three key aspects of male socialization that are the foundation of men's violence against women:

• Men viewing women as "less than;"

• Men treating women as property;

• Men viewing women as objects.

We as good men have to find our voice and began to challenge this collective socialization of men. We as good men have to teach our sons and other young men how to truly respect and promote equality for women.

We as good men have to envision the world we want to see for our daughters and other girls -- and in that world how would we want to see our sons and other men acting and behaving. We must as good men understand that the world we want for our daughters and other girls won't happen through osmosis. We as good men have to break out of the man box, stand up and speak out to end violence against women and girls.

Merry Christmas!

2010-12-25T15:09:00.002-05:00

h/t Racism Review: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, "The Christmas Message of Hope" (entire piece here for free registration)

Melissa Harris-Perry, Breaking It Down

2010-12-25T15:09:00.000-05:00

h/t racismreview. The share a clip that precedes this one, but I like this one best.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gov. Paterson Got This Right; Barbour Should Do Likewise

2010-12-23T18:52:00.000-05:00

Personally, I don't think John Harris White should've been convicted in the first place. Perhaps NY Gov. David Paterson should've pardoned him, but at least he's free and out of prison. And rather than going around denying the experience of black Mississippians and campaigning for 2012, Gov Haley Barbour needs to pardon the Scott sisters.

And speaking of Barbour and his fond memories of his childhood - parched up on his upper-class white male privilege in Mississippi, I'm sure the Civil Rights era was anything but terrifying and violent. That doesn't mean that it wasn't hell for black folks, nor does it mean that he didn't contribute to problem of institutionalized racism.

Progressive Rallies Are so Gay!: Today's Good News, Bad News

2010-12-18T15:22:00.000-05:00

(December 9, 2010 - Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images North America)

Activists Rally On Capitol Hill For Congress To Pass Repeal Of DADT

An activist holds a picture of U.S. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during a rally on "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC. Servicemembers Legal Defense Network held the rally to call on the Senate to pass the National Defense Authorization Bill that includes the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" which prohibits gay people from serving openly in the military.

That was just last week, and you know what happened just today?

Don't Ask Don't Tell Repeal Clears Major Senate Hurdle

After months of fits and starts, a bill repealing "don't ask, don't tell," the ban against gays serving openly in the military, cleared its last major hurdle to passage Saturday when the Senate voted 63 to 33 to end debate on the bill.

Six Republicans -- Sens. Scott Brown of Massachusetts, Susan Collins and Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Mark Kirk of Illinois, and George Voinovich of Ohio -- joined 56 Democrats in support of the measure. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) did not vote Saturday, but released a statement saying he could not support repeal "at this time." (emphasis mine)

And they didn't even have unanimous Democratic support.

So okay, supporters of the repeal of DADT have been protesting and rallying probably since Pres Bill Clinton first signed it into law in 1993. Gays have been prohibited from serving in the military since the American Revolution, except, of course, when the military was stretched. Kinda like now. And DADT was a compromise Clinton later admitted didn't work. If Pres Obama signs the repeal on Tuesday, it will be exactly 17 years to the day that Clinton signed it into law.

Get that? Even though it was "[i]n the 1970s [that] the gay and lesbian rights movement emerged in the U.S. and chose the anti-gay military policy as one of its main targets," only now will gays and lesbians be allowed to serve openly in the military. It's taken well over 30 years of protests, 3 wars, and a dangerously strained military for open gays to get the right to die for their country. That's the point I'm to make: movements take decades, if ever, to make they changes they seek. It's ridiculous to be so pissy at Obama when there's been no strong progressive movement in the recent past for him to draw on, and there's none now.

I don't know how (white) progressives will react to the news, though. Cause even though candidate Obama pledged to end DADT, NPR headlines, "Ending Military's Gay Ban Lets Obama Fulfill Another Clinton Promise." I find that headline off-putting, but the actual article isn't so cynical and goes on to telling the bad news: the Dream Act remains deferred.

I feel a little to blame for the failure of the Dream Act to reach cloture on a vote of 55 - 41. I didn't even call my one Democratic senator, and she didn't vote to end debate. I assumed she'd support it, so I know how those who're disappointed with the tax-cut compromise feel. Even if she had voted to end debate, the filibuster would've continued because 4 other Democratic senators failed to vote to end debate. Supporters had 2 Republican senators, Brown of Mass and Murkowski of Alaska, so it's really the fault of the 5 Dems that it didn't pass. Progressives argue that Obama should do more arm twisting. I argue that progressives should do more senate calling.

I should've called my senators. I'm really very sorry I didn't. Really.

Homie Don't Play That!

2010-12-18T01:21:00.000-05:00

h/t racismreview, 24 members of the Congressional black caucus voted against the tax-cut compromise.

Let's be clear. I have made a distinction between white progressives and progressives of color. I feel people of color have more reason to be upset because the worst is happening to us. To be sure, it’s not all Obama’s fault, and he's not the only one they've taken issue with.

The black caucus has been more consistently critical of Obama in a substantive way. They were equally as critical of W Bush and Republicans. And when it comes to blacks fighting for justice in general . . . how many white people did you see at the Jena 6 protests?

So on to another point in terms of race in the US . . . why haven’t we heard more on this than we've heard on the “woe is us” whining from the white left?

Remember This? "9/11, Vote for Me!"

2010-12-17T09:59:00.000-05:00

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"Senate Republicans filibuster the Zadroga bill but pass tax cuts for the wealthy (NY Times), which is great news for firefighters who make over $200,000 a year."

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"9/11 first responders watch as Mitch McConnell cries over a friend's retirement, and Jon Kyl explains why the Senate can't work the week after Christmas."

Progressives, Your Approval Waiting is Low

2010-12-11T02:22:00.004-05:00

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National Displeasure

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Stewart puts it nicely. He makes us laugh. Or at least, he makes me laugh. Fair warning: after the jump, I stop laughing.

I have had it with the whining from the left. "Obama betrayed us!" they cry. This recent deal he cut with the Republicans really got'em all pissy and whiny.

Now let us be perfectly clear: I don't agree with everything Obama has done since he's been in office. I think the tax policy as currently constructed is atrocious. He's the commander in chief of the US military - can't he just order people to leave gays and lesbians in the military alone. Me, I don't understand why anyone would fight for this country, including people in my family. But if somebody's willing to do it, I say let'em fight. I know I got no intentions of doing it myself. So if that's what they wanna do, who am I to stop'em?

I'm sorry. I'm rambling. The point I'm trying to make is that just because I'm defend Obama doesn't mean I think he's been perfect. Okay? Okay. But for the record, we got a lot of this deal, including extending unemployment benefits.

Now back to our scheduled programming: progressives, will you shut the f*ck up! You're complain that Obama's mad at the wrong people; what about you? What do you want him to do? Just ignore the whole rest of the country and push through everything we want?

Okay. Let's play pretend for a minute. Let's pretend Obama was the progressive W and hadn't made this deal or compromised healthcare reform.

Where do you think we'd be right now? I guess you think Max Baucus would've stood up for a single-payer system? Or maybe you think the blue dogs in the House would been on your side in this current uproar. What about Kent Conrad or Evan Bayh? What do you think they would've done?

I don't understand what the problem is. Perhaps you've forgotten the basics of government, that the president of the US government can't introduce policy. Perhaps you've forgotten that in addition to the president, there're another 535 people, the majority of whom you have to get on your side.

Or perhaps you've forgotten that "we're the people we've been looking for." Or perhaps you just forgot, that "two years ago, activists on the Left agreed about one thing: any real gains to be made under an Obama presidency would depend on pressure from the grassroots after the voting was over. Unfortunately this consensus did not actually lead to such a mobilization."

No! I know what it is! You left the country after Obama's inauguration and missed "death panel" summer and the recent midterm elections. Everything's making sense now! No wonder Dems took such a beating: you weren't here to vote. Yeah, it's all coming together for me.

Now, let me be as plain and clear as I can. I don't know if you're holding this first nonwhite president to higher standards than say, Gore or Clinton. I mean, I think you are, but you'd probably disagree. I don't quite understand why you're so upset about the things you didn't get as opposed to all the things Obama has accomplished in less than two years as president. Healthcare reform. Financial regulation reform. Ending combat in Iraq. Yes, I could go on. You're complaining that he's not more like LBJ or FDR as though you're just as ignorant of history as are the tea pots. FDR wasn't some master of the "fireside" bully pulpit from day one. In fact, he was actually more conservative initially than he's remembered. I mean, initially social security wasn't just only for widows and children, it was only for white widows and children. Medicare wasn't always what it is now. And as disillusioned as you are, Obama's not the problem.

You are. Yeah! I said it! You're the problem. As in, "It's not me. It is you." How much time have you spent discussing politics with your family and friends? Have you tried to explain basic economic theory to the asshats claiming to defend the Constitution? Have you even tried to tell them what really happened and how the bailout really came about?

See, I know as fact that people wearing three-cornered hats are bugging out over race. This nigger show, as they call it, can't end soon enough. But what's your problem? Did you really think he was "chocolate Jesus?" What's the matter with you? Did you think all you had to do was get him elected? Even though he said if you thought you could just vote for him and then be done, that he'd rather you not vote for him?

Listen. Elections matter. But they're not all that matters. We all know that the tea pots are subsidized by people who care very little for them or the Constitution; but there're millions of tea pots nonetheless. Where have you been? Signing internet petitions while they rally at this place or the other? Sure, signing internet petitions and making phone calls to me Congresspeople are all I've been doing. But my health is the pits. What's your excuse?

So stop complaining like Obama's the problem. You sound just like the tea idiots when you do that. Focus your attention on doing the work of making phone calls, showing up at rallies, shouting in a loud voice against the politics and politicians you so hate. Don't let the Republicans off the hook. Don't like Mitch McConnell or Ben Nelson or John Salazer get away with impunity like just a couple of months ago, they weren't in favor of extend all the Bush tax cuts. Don't do that.

Cause when you do, you're no better than the ones you're trying to defeat. Obama's not their problem. And he's not yours either.

You Know What? I Think I'm with Pres. Obama on This One

2010-12-08T03:26:00.016-05:00

I initially agreed with those who're upset with Pres. Obama for backing down. After watching the president's news conference, I changed my mind. The video below is a segment from MSNBC's Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. Essentially, now I agree with Lawrence and Ezra Klein. Strategy and communication from the White House leave a world to be desired. But the policy, considering the circumstances, isn't all that bad.

And let's not forget several congressional Dems were moving over to the Republican side. Several Dems ran against the president in the recent midterm elections. Several Dems voted for the Bush tax cuts that got us in the mess in the first place. So lets not delude ourselves into believe that this whole mess is entirely Obama's fault. Constitutionally, the president doesn't write policy anyway. If congressional Dems wanna act all bad ass now, they're perfectly free to hold up legislation till they get what they want.

Come to think of it, if they really were so bad ass, they could've called the Pubs on this before the election. What's keeping them from doing another reconciliation bill?

But the blame doesn't stop there. What about the vaunted American people? Huh? Aren't they to blame? They're the ones who vote against their own economic interests. They're the ones who went all bat-crap crazy over imaginary death panels and put the Publicans in power in the first place. And let's not pretend race isn't a factor here. White voters have just plain old lost their minds since the White House went black. Conservatives fear revenge, and progressives demand that the black man be twice as good. Don't get me wrong. If some of us black folks decide to resort to their second amendment rights, I say have at it! Don't stop till you get enough! The economy of black America is approaching Great Depression numbers!

But all you white folks need to shut up and sit down. If you really wanna be all pissy, get your neighbors and family and friends to vote with their heads instead of their skin. Then maybe, we can get somewhere.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

You Know I Had to Get Me Some: Privilege Denying Dude

2010-11-29T21:53:00.016-05:00

It's a big thing over at memegenerator. There's an article about it, “Privilege Denying Dude” and the Fight for the Right to Snark over at colorlines. Basicially, it's a rip at cyber and "enlightened" racism, sexism, and other 'isms. If you're not familiar with "enlightened racism," Jessie at racismreview has written several posts about it.

Of course, I just think it's great!

Cause I have seriously heard this last one almost word for word before.

The Opposite of Love Is Not Hate

2010-11-29T11:44:00.000-05:00

Last week, I posted some thoughts on the Boston club that shut down because too many people on line were black. I've since updated it.

The guy who organized the private party shares his "[dismay] that after having spent the last few hours with the club owner, I do not believe him to be a racist." Of course, the guy is, but that nonetheless made ptcruiser over at Prometheus6 wonder why guy's "deeper feelings" was even an issue. To which I responded that:

@ ptc - Okay. Let's set aside his deeper feelings. Discrimination took place. If the white-US can't accept that at least 93% of them are racist, then they need to accept that fact that discrimination happens, it happens primarily to people of color, and it's perpetrated primarily by whites. I'm not sure how we're going to at least end discrimination, if not racism, if white US-Americans won't live in reality.

ProfGeo puts it nicely. It's bad enough even some black folks will read this and argue argue that class, not race, is the problem. But to be able to do something racist and have your victims defend your sincerity - like that guy apologized to Cheney - that's just too much.

Today, ptcruiser shared this (and I don't know who Cobb is):

The aspect of this discussion focusing on whether the club owner's actions were motivated by racism or not reminded me of something Cobb wrote a few years ago that I saved:

"You see, the lesson I learned in interdependency was that, anybody who doesn't mind to see you fail is, by definition, your enemy. I didn't understand that - I thought that people had to dislike you and consciously plot against you. But in fact, all people have to do is know you and ignore or discount those who actually do plot against you. These are those who won't let you know that the truck is about to hit you. They want to see a crash and it doesn't matter to them that it's you. It doesn't matter how many episodes of Seinfeld you have discussed over lunch at the food court, they are nonetheless your enemy."

I just think that's something people need to grapple with, need to accept. You don't have to actively hate anyone to be racist. In fact, just a having a preference for one group over another still leads you ". . . to disadvantage [others] and to deny them the opportunities you have in your group.” If you're white, and you're not actively fighting racism in yourself and others, you're not part of the solution, you're part of the problem. The opposite of love isn't hate, it's indifference.

Double Life Sentences for $11? Som'em Ain't Right

2010-11-27T21:33:00.000-05:00

So, will two black Mississippi women, whom so many agree have been unjustly imprisoned, now be freed?

On Sunday, syndicated columnist Leonard Pitts Jr. of the Miami Herald became the latest to raise his voice. He wrote:
"Let’s assume they did it.

"Let’s assume that two days before Christmas in 1993, a 22-year-old black woman named Jamie Scott and her pregnant, 19-year-old sister Gladys set up an armed robbery. Let’s assume these single mothers lured two men to a spot outside the tiny town of Forest, Miss., where three teenage boys, using a shotgun the sisters supplied, relieved the men of $11 and sent them on their way, unharmed.

"Assume all of the above is true, and still you must be shocked at the crude brutality of the Scott sisters’ fate. You see, the sisters, neither of whom had a criminal record before this, are still locked away in state prison, having served 16 years of their double-life sentences.

"It bears repeating. Each sister is doing double life for a robbery in which $11 was taken and nobody was hurt. Somewhere, the late Nina Simone is moaning her signature song: Mississippi Goddam."

As I'm to understand:

. . .[T]hey have served more time than many Mississippians who have committed much worse crimes: people who actually brandished weapons, people who injured or killed or raped other people, people who bilked families out of livelihoods or helped indict their political enemies while keeping their buddies and their kids out of jail for real crimes. (Hint on the latter: Read Curtis Wilkie’s new book, “The Fall of the House of Zeus.”)

But not only is their evidence that the boys were under pressure by police to perjure themselves, the belongings of one of the alleged victims was found,

. . . two sheriff’s deputies took [prison trusty Willie ] Shepard and other trusties to The Cow Pasture to search for evidence. Another trusty, Melvin Gilbert, found a wallet containing $60 and some cards belonging to Mitchell Duckworth [one of the defendants], Shepard said.

You can find more info and links here, and you can find tons of info with just a simple google search. I'm kinda late on this myself and'll have to do some more reading of my own.

Did You Get the Email?

2010-11-27T17:42:00.001-05:00

No? Neither did I.

Wanna know why?

Cause there was no email!!! It was just a joke!

Still, apparently Fox posted it like it really happened, and readers took the bait. Dumb-dumbs!

"We Don't Eat Pumpkin Pie!"

2010-11-25T23:14:00.001-05:00

LOL!! Oh my goodness! Marcellus Wiley is hilarious! He and Doug Gottlieb were hosting the ESPN tv/radio show, "Mike and Mike" today, and in discussing their families' Thanksgiving traditions, Wiley explains that black folks don't eat pumpkin pie! You have to scroll down the link I share, but someone else twitters about it, too.

Wow! Hilarious! I know I prefer sweet potato pie. But I was hesitant to make that generalization. That Wiley said it on national TV no less, and discussed it several times on other programs . . . Oh! That's just great stuff!

But let's be honest. Thanksgiving ain't a holy day for everybody, and Shari Valentine over at Racism Review shares a brief and poignant description of the 4th Thursday of November in her Lakota Souix home:

Recently, I was in an academic setting with several people and the “holidays” came up, a particularly sensitive race scholar noted that I do not celebrate “Thanksgiving.” The observation itself was noteworthy for its rarity. There is absolutely no reason for a Native American to celebrate Thanksgiving. It is an event which celebrates the survival of a people who would go on to perpetrate possibly the most far reaching genocide in human history. This post began as a historical retelling, and if you are looking for corrections to the historic record Jessie has excellent ones hereand here and Joe does a wonderful job here. An interesting note on Thanksgiving is that the turkey is known as the giveaway bird because he is willing to sacrifice everything to help the people live. Whereas, many outsiders see the turkey as a silly bird, he embodies a fundamental concept about sacrifice and survival in Indian country.

Thanksgiving creates interesting reactions in Indian Country and in my household. On the one hand, it is very Native. All special times and ceremonies are celebrated with the inclusion of a feast and a giveaway. So, any ceremonial occasion could be Thanksgiving. Every Thanksgiving, we take time to remember that if we were a less trusting or less honorable culture, we would not have Thanksgiving. We would also not have stone carvings of genocidal men carved in the Sacred Black Hills and drilling set to commence at the foot of Bear Butte. We fill a pipe and make prayers, with small hope, that Leonard Peltier will see the Black Hills again before he dies. We sing songs in languages that are barely surviving and teach our children to sing it as well so that it may survive one more generation. We are grateful to have our children since for so many generations they were stolen away to missionary boarding schools where they were punished for speaking their language and sexually assaulted with regularity while being indoctrinated with “Christian” principles those Pilgrims brought over.

We make prayers for the elderly and the children on reservations with no heat and inadequate housing. We hope that we will not be attending the celebrations of their life as they succumb to death by exposure as so many do each winter. In my household, we bring out choke cherries saved from the summer picking up North and a bit of buffalo to keep us connected to home. We set out the gifts received from others in the many ceremonies through the year and make prayers for them and smile in appreciation of them. We do all of these things before we put on the turkey and dressing and get ourselves ready to join in the dominant pastimes of food excess and football. Because we too have become a part of that colonizing culture in so many ways. Some years we duck those traditions and spend the entire day remembering our ancestors and relatives in ceremonies more in keeping with our culture and take a moment to be thankful because we are still here against all odds.

That Degree Don't Turn Ya White (Updated)

2010-11-22T23:12:00.001-05:00

So let's stop it with that whole, "If black people would just value education, blah, blah, blah" nonsense. And let's also disabuse ourselves of that, "He/she/I'm not racist, but he/she/I just did some racist mess," uh, mess. Make no mistake about it, that club owner is racist. That doesn't mean he burns crosses on the weekends to relax. It just means he'll hurt his own profit margin if too many black folks show up at his club. If black alum from Harvard and Yale can't even wait in line to enter an invitation-only party at club, then that black Harvard alum in the White House doesn't really mean much, does he? And yes, they had been invited.

A party for black Harvard and Yale alums at a Boston club this weekend was shut down just after 11pm. Why? The club owner was concerned that a long line of black people outside would make the club look bad.

Update:

What Do You Call a Black Man With a J.D.?
A "gangbanger," apparently, if you are the owner of the Boston club that expelled dozens of black Harvard and Yale students and alumni last weekend on suspicion of being criminals. Ask D. Omavi Harshaw, who was there.
By: D. Omavi Harshaw | Posted: November 24, 2010

It was hard to tell if the several dozen black Harvard and Yale graduate students and alumni exiting Cure Lounge Saturday night were shivering from the unwelcoming Boston cold or trembling from anger after we were kicked out of our own private party quite literally because of the color of our skin.

Harvard-Yale football homecoming has a unique significance for black graduate students who gather to celebrate; it is a temporary moment of relief. The Ivy League postgraduate environment can be a very a hostile one for blacks, who are arguably made to feel more at home in America's prisons than in its top universities.

So it's no wonder that the hundreds of black graduate students and alumni who flocked to Cambridge, Mass., last weekend were extremely excited at the opportunity to mix, mingle and dance freely with their peers from across the nation. The culminating party was held at Cure Lounge, a private club. After a long wait in line, things began to warm up as the DJ dropped gems and we dropped money at the bar. Around 10:45 p.m., I had just achieved enough liquid courage to approach this girl when the music suddenly stopped.

The lights came on. Girls stopped dancing. Bartenders began to clean the bar. I then saw looks of confusion become looks of indignation as the bouncers told the crowd that everyone would have to leave.

Why? What they told the crowd: technical difficulties. What they told the promoters, according to an e-mail they later sent out to those who had been invited: The people in line outside [read: black women] would attract "local gangbangers." Yet anyone remotely familiar with Boston knows that local gangbangers in the Theater District look more like Colin Sullivan from The Departed than Omar Little from The Wire.

We were kicked out because apparently the promoters did not tell the owner that the Harvard and Yale graduates and alumni in attendance that night would be black. Quite simply, on Saturday, Nov. 20, 2010, a group of overprivileged blacks were kicked out of a private venue because of the color of our skin.

The owner of the club wanted to teach us a lesson: We are not above the law. What law, you might ask? Clearly, to him and many like him, the law of the land is that blacks are to behave according to the will of whites, be it through zoning laws, admissions letters or nightclub entries. We may enter, we may even prosper, but we must never control. We must never set the rules of the game. The white owner once again proved the fallacy of a post-racial America. In a sad twist of irony, the group that organized the party is named Triumph, and the club is named Cure.

The black men and women who were on their way to Cure Lounge that night were going to celebrate the mistaken belief that we've made it, by playing by the rules and winning "the Game." Blacks who have graduated from predominantly white schools to work in predominantly white corporations were on their way to a white-owned club, but for all that, we were reminded Saturday that we are still a part of the most stigmatized group in this nation.

I encourage those of us who were there that night to remember that if it feels like racism and smells like racism, then it's probably racism. No person screaming that we're "paranoid" should get in the way of the common sense imparted to us by the family and friends who sent us to these institutions. Our common sense will prove to be more useful than any $200,000 piece of paper we might gain upon our departure from these intellectual plantations.

Finally, I would like to encourage African Americans to redefine our vision of success. Access is not success. It is not enough to gain access to these institutions, corporations or even exclusive nightclubs. We should never forget that we were sent here by teachers, community leaders and families to transform these entities, not to conform to the bigotry and callousness that are their hallmarks.

Now we must create and control. That is success: Creating a situation where we don't have to give toxic loans to our brothers and sisters in low-income areas, where we don't have to temper our language to satisfy white department heads and detached academics, where we don't have to listen to bouncers lie to our brothers and sisters as they are being kicked out of a nightclub because of the color of their skin.

At some point we must stop thanking God for rain when, in fact, we're getting urinated on by mainstream America.
D. Omavi Harshaw has worked in indigent defense and prisoners' rights across the South as well as in the Boston area. He is currently a J.D. candidate at Harvard Law School.

Again, This Is Why People of Color Don't Go for "States' Rights"

2010-11-19T00:28:00.000-05:00

h/t prometheus6.org

It's freakin deja vu all freaking over again! The South wanted the rest of the country to "mind their business" before the Civil War, and after. "Wah, wah, wah! We shouldn't have to prove we're not being racist before we do something racist!" The NAACP's Legal Defense Fund is filing a motion for a summary judgment to uphold the constitutionality of Section 5 of the 1965 Voters' Rights Act based mostly on the fact that racism is ongoing. And by ongoing, I mean that just recently as 2008, the DoJ disapproved the redistricting because it eliminated the city’s sole majority-minority district. Of course, nonminorities in Shelby complained that the DoJ had annulled the will of majority, "Wah, wah, wah! We don't get to exert political tyranny over our racial minorities!"

So, no. Until white Americans (Sorry, Canadians and Mexicans, and other inhabitants of North and South Americas. I'm thinking of using another term, but haven't decided yet.) get their shhh - er - selves together, don't expect the majority of black folks to support "states' rights" or buy into the whole "local guvment is best" business. Conservatives hate the over-reaching judiciary. That is, they hate it until Congress doesn't give them what they want. Then they're more than willing to tell the majority their concerns don't matter. And don't expect African Americans to just take white America's word that racism doesn't remain a constant negative impact in our lives.

This whole business has been going on since the summer. I don't know how I missed it, but I fully intend to stay abreast of the developments.

You'll Thank Me Later

2010-11-18T23:55:00.000-05:00

Especially if you've been supporting Republicans without knowing the facts.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Budge This!!

2010-11-16T10:16:00.000-05:00

This just in: I'm a genius. Let me at the budget cause I can balance the thang like riding a bike! 25% of the savings I found came in cuts, including cutting our "Cold" War era-military spending. I would've cut the Drug War spending, too, if it were an option. The other 75% came from tax increases, including increases on dividends, capital gains, and reinstating the estate tax.

Listen, when we say the rich aren't paying their "fair share," what we mean is that they use the roads more, and gain more from protection by the military, which is usuually made up of soldiers from lower- and middle-class families. With the exception of the police state of most inner-city neighborhoods, it's their wealth and property the police are most interested in protecting.

Don't worry. You can't getchu some, too. Go to this interactive link via NYTimes and see if you can balance the budget.

Is This What You Mean by "Pro" Life?

2010-11-15T12:19:00.001-05:00

h/t racismreview

The Tennessee report has discussed the comments of a Tennessee state representative thus:

Rep. Curry Todd remarked during a Fiscal Review Committee presentation this week that the idea of government-funded care for pregnant women [Mexican immigrants] who cannot prove they have United States government permission to be in this country struck him as not unlike inviting a rat infestation. The Collierville Republican made the comments after asking CoverKids program managers whether the state checks the citizenship status of care recipients. . . . [They] responded that CoverKids doesn’t provide medical coverage to pregnant women, but it does offer “unborn coverage …. ”Rep. Todd responded: “Well, they can go out there like rats and multiply, then, I guess.”

I hardly know what to say. You know I favor a single-payer healthcare system. I have absolutely no problem whatsoever with people receiving care, regardless of citizenship or birth status. But everybody should find these comments abominably reprehensible:

I did find others who had an easier time expressing themselves:

Rep. Curry Todd: Who's the Real Rat Here?

Posted by Betsy Phillips on Fri, Nov 12, 2010 at 12:30 PM

Lind has this choice quote from Collierville Rep. Curry Todd up at Post Politics:
Todd goes on to say the issue remains, saying, “I don’t want to see any child not have care, but I feel they are abusing our system here because they know they can get these kids services, and the taxpayers in Tennessee are the ones having to pay for this, it's not them.”
Now, I realize this whole incident — starting with his remarks earlier this week comparing undocumented immigrant mothers-to-be to multiplying vermin — has proven that Todd's not a very thoughtful guy. But he's in the state legislature. Shouldn't he have some basic understanding of how our state works?

Does he not know we don't have an income tax?

If you buy things here in Tennessee, you are a taxpayer in Tennessee, regardless of your legal status. This idea that there are two discrete groups — taxpayers of Tennessee, and people whose residency gives them access to our services — is breathtakingly false.

Regardless of how you feel about the immigration issues, there's no need to lie. If you live here and you buy things, you are a taxpayer at the state level. And so you are indeed having to pay for programs.

To say otherwise either reveals a politician as incredibly stupid or a liar.

Now mind you, this guy is "pro-life" but claims he's concerned about "anchor babies." The problem with that is that the whole notion of "anchor babies' offensive to many and a myth created by anti-immigration nativists, and it's nonsense that doesn't account for facts (pdf). I gotta raise my hand as one who's offended by the term. Especially since I cannot imagine that immigration from southern Europe, though drastically decreased from previous decades, remained within legal bounds after the immigration act of 1924.

It's Too Late to Plead the Fifth

2010-11-14T18:15:00.001-05:00

Okay, so I could've posted about W Bush's confession that he authorized torture last week. But I decided to be a downer the week of Veterans' Day. However, that was last week, and I just got an interesting reminder via Portside, and an idea just occured to me. The reminder, the actual text of which I share later, is that there are two investigations related to the U.S. torture program pending in the National Court of Spain.

And the thought? Since the Republican party has decided to go tea pot crazy and co-sign the idiocy that Obama is some sort of jihadist Manchurian president, and since they promise a series of investigations into the Obama administration, Obama should go after BushCo full board. What does he have to lose? And is it really worth permiting the injustice of not holding war criminals accountable for their crimes?

You can find this op-ed here at commondreams.org:

Why George W. Bush Should Still Worry
Bush Pens True Crime Book, No Justice for CIA Destruction of 92 Torture Tapes

by Bill Quigley

In his memoir (which some wise people have already moved in bookstores to the CRIME section) George W. Bush admitted that he authorized that detainees be waterboarded, tortured, a crime under US and international law.

Bush’s crime confession coincides with reports that no one will face criminal charges from the US Department of Justice for the destruction of 92 CIA videotapes which contained interrogations using waterboarding.

Where is the accountability for these crimes?

Bush and other criminals will be brought to justice if the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights (ECCHR) have their way.

CCR and ECCHR jointly intervened into a criminal investigation in Spain examining the role of former civilian and military officials from the Bush administration in the commission of international law violations, including torture. The investigation is ongoing and includes the crimes that Bush admitted he authorized.

CCR and ECCHR made it clear that they are committed to pursuing criminal accountability and Bush’s confessions help. In a joint statement they said:

“As Attorney General Eric Holder stated during his confirmation hearings, waterboarding is torture. Calling these acts what they are, torture, is not the result of differing legal ‘opinion,’ as Bush states; it is a matter of law. Harold Koh, the State Department Legal Adviser, confirmed this in Geneva last week, stating during the U.S. Universal Periodic Review that “the Obama administration defines waterboarding as torture as a matter of law” and it is not a ‘policy choice.’

“There are no circumstances or excuses—including ‘national security’—under domestic and international law that allow for the use of torture. And there is an obligation to investigate and prosecute torture.

“Bush’s decision to authorize torture and other illegal acts against detainees held in U.S. custody led to the use of torture at Guantánamo, in Iraq, Afghanistan, and in secret prisons by U.S. forces, and contractors, certain allies and the national forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. His decision led to Abu Ghraib.

“Debates as to whether or not waterboarding of detainees led to intelligence or make the nation ’safer’ are not relevant questions. The only valid question is: can we torture? The answer is no.

“Without accountability it is impossible to ensure that such actions are never authorized by any future president or other U.S. official. No immunity protects Bush from prosecution for acts which violate federal and international law. The Pinochet precedent demonstrates that the law eventually catches up with former presidents—even those who flout their impunity.

“Bush states that accountability ‘would set a terrible precedent for our democracy.’

“We answer that not doing so is failing our democracy—yet again. We therefore urge the Obama administration and the Department of Justice to act upon their recognition that waterboarding is torture as a matter of law, to investigate and prosecute acts of torture and other serious violations carried out by officials of the former administration, including George W. Bush.

“But we will not wait any longer for the Obama administration to act—we will continue seeking justice and accountability under the principle of universal jurisdiction and as counsel in the ongoing investigation in Spain.”

Sell those books, George W, you may need the money for legal fees yet!

For more information on CCR’s work towards accountability, visit http://www.ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/spanish-investigation-us-torture.

Bill is Legal Director at the Center for Constitutional Rights and a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans. He is a Katrina survivor and has been active in human rights in Haiti for years with the Institute for Justice and Democracy in Haiti. Quigley77@gmail.com

1st and 15: Black Coaches and ADs in the NCAA

2010-11-12T17:57:00.000-05:00

Guess what! It's getting better! Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at the University of Central Florida released a study yesterday about diversity college football's executive positions of power.

The bad news is that when it comes to athletic directors and college presidents, there's a very, very long way to go. The study found that all conference commissioners, 93 percent of school presidents and 88 percent of athletic directors at these colleges were white.

The good news is that [a] record 15 coaches of color led FBS teams at the start of the 2010 season.

Okay, so it's nothing earth shattering. But after releasing somewhat more negative energy earlier today, I wanted to celebrate some good news.

Now on to Prometheus6.org to discuss what I'm now calling the National Commision on Fiscal Reform for the Rich.

It's Not the Economy, Stupid! It's the Stupid!

2010-11-12T10:27:00.019-05:00

You can just read my previous post if you haven't already. But the point is, regardless of the fears of the tea pots and kettles, the economy is don't relatively fair. It's not what anyone'd want. It's not what it would've been with a larger stimulus. But the sky isn't falling. At least not for white America. (So black folks, lets start working on our ungrammatical "Boehner Doesn't Care about Poeple" posters for our anti-Republican rallies.) Even conservative economists agree that the stimulus worked. Economists at Heritage and American Enterprise Institute agree raising taxes now would increase revenue. There's no economic value to keeping the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

So, assuming you're neither racist nor stupid even though I think you're both, exactly why are you supporting policies that have never been, and weren't supposed to be, in your economic interests? Quit blaming your stupid voting on the economy. Blame the economy on your stupid.

A 3rd Problem I Have with Tea Partyists: North Dakota

2010-11-12T10:18:00.000-05:00

Listen, this isn't about embarrassing anyone, so I won't call any names. But a commenter for another post expressed concerned about her congressman's representation of and concern for the "working man" of her state, North Dakota.

Now, in addition to having no policy behind their rhetoric, all too often tea partyists actually believe the exaggerations and hyperbole's they hear coming from the people who feign concern but are, in fact, exploiting the country's "working man." Facts don't matter to folks who cry out about being "taxed enough already" just as their taxes are being cut, who think their taxes were raised, and then really get upset that they're portrayed as racists.

So, what're the facts about North Dakota's economy? According to politifact's "Pants on Fire" rating of an ad from one of Karl Rove's organizations, Crossroads GPS:

How well is North Dakota doing as the rest of the country muddles through a rough patch for the economy? On a relative basis at least, quite well indeed, thanks to a surge in natural resource extraction and relatively little decline in a housing market that never really boomed.

Here are some statistical benchmarks we located.

-- Unemployment. Today, North Dakota has the lowest unemployment rate in the nation, at 3.7 percent. That's just over one-third -- yes, that's one-third -- of the national unemployment rate of 9.6 percent.

And this low unemployment rate is nothing new. North Dakota's annual unemployment rate for 2009 also ranked as the best in the nation at 4.3 percent, compared to a 9.3 percent rate nationally. In 2008, North Dakota ranked second (3.2 percent, compared to 5.8 percent nationally). In 2007, it ranked eighth (3.1 percent, compared to 4.6 percent nationally). And in 2006, it ranked seventh (3.2 percent, compared to 4.6 percent nationally).

-- Personal income. Total personal income in North Dakota rose 23 percent between 2006 and 2009, compared to 8 percent nationally. It rose by 12 percent in North Dakota between 2007 and 2009, compared to 2 percent nationally. And it fell by 1 percent between 2008 and 2009, compared to a national decline of 2 percent. So personal income in North Dakota did fall between 2008 and 2009, but it fell more slowly than the national rate, and it followed on two years of personal income growth, far ahead of the national rate.

The story is much the same for per capita personal income. It rose by 21 percent between 2006 and 2009 and by 10 percent between 2007 and 2009 before falling by 2 percent between 2008 and 2009.

-- Gross domestic product. GDP information by state is not available for 2009, so the full impact of the recession is not yet measurable. But the data that's available shows that the state enjoyed a nice boom between 2006 and 2008. State GDP rose by 12 percent between 2006 and 2007, compared to 1.9 percent nationally. And it rose by 9 percent between 2007 and 2008, compared to zero increase nationally. So on this score, North Dakota did well indeed.

When we asked Jonathan Collegio, a spokesman for Crossroads GPS, if the group had any defense for its characterization, he said, "Unemployment is up significantly in the last two years in North Dakota, and much of that is due to the massive debt created by (President Barack) Obama, Nancy Pelosi and Earl Pomeroy."

But let's put it into context: The unemployment rate in North Dakota rose from 3.4 percent two years ago, in September 2008, to 3.7 percent in September 2010. The number of unemployed North Dakotans has risen from 12,365 to 13,714 -- a total of 1,349 people, or less than 1 percent of the civilian, non-institutionalized population in the state. We think most Americans would be happier with that kind of economy than the one in their own state.

So Teila (Oops! I called your name.), Rep. Earl Pomeroy looked out for you guys. I think voting him out of office was a bad idea. Especially since it was based on lies and untruths.

Reading, Riting, and Rithmetics (sic) (Additional Info)

2010-11-10T18:56:00.001-05:00

(According to the first-ever comprehensive study (pdf) comparing the percentage of U.S. students in the graduating class of 2009 who have advanced skills in math with the percentages of similar high achievers in 56 other countries, approximately 6 percent of U. S. students perform at the advanced level in math compared to 28 percent of Taiwanese students and more than 20 percent of students in Finland and Korea, for example.)

A new study has found that the achievement gap is larger (pdf) than we thought. According to the NY Times:

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys.

Yep.

Only 12 percent of black fourth-grade boys are proficient in reading, compared with 38 percent of white boys, and only 12 percent of black eighth-grade boys are proficient in math, compared with 44 percent of white boys. (emphasis mine)

No, nothing's wrong with my editor. I just wanna make sure you didn't miss the fact that white boys seem to be dumb as hell, too. It's not like public education as currently constructed is just failing black children. It's failing everybody. And of course, black kids get a double dose of dumb.

How do we fix the problem?

“There’s accumulating evidence that there are racial differences in what kids experience before the first day of kindergarten,” said Ronald Ferguson, director of the Achievement Gap Initiative at Harvard. “They have to do with a lot of sociological and historical forces. In order to address those, we have to be able to have conversations that people are unwilling to have.”

Those include “conversations about early childhood parenting practices,” Dr. Ferguson said. “The activities that parents conduct with their 2-, 3- and 4-year-olds. How much we talk to them, the ways we talk to them, the ways we enforce discipline, the ways we encourage them to think and develop a sense of autonomy.”

Yeah, cause, you know, black folks don't know how to raise their kids. But before we start blaming the victim, let's look at some other factors. Now, NYT points out that:

Poverty alone does not seem to explain the differences: poor white boys do just as well as African-American boys who do not live in poverty, measured by whether they qualify for subsidized school lunches.

But that's not entirely accurate. There's more to the story. Much more:

Black mothers have a higher infant mortality rate and black children are twice as likely as whites to live in a home where no parent has a job.
Poor children of color are most likely (ppt) to attend schools and live in neighborhoods of concentrated disadvantage where the conditions that give rise to the Childhood Opportunity Gap (pdf) are common.

Just so we're clear, the entire quote comes from the pdf link. But both provide about the same information. The Rutgers powerpoint by professor Cati Coe is very enlightening. For example, if you haven't already, consider what happens in neighborhoods of concentrated poverty. Right? Prof Coe distills some points Douglas Massey makes in a 1990 academic article about the what happens in these neighborhoods (ppt):

Loss of businesses: grocery stores, banks, etc
Loss of political power: environmental discrimination (waste processing facilities and chemical plants)
Lower property values: deteriorating buildings and and unsavory facilities (jails)
Loss of medical facilities and clinics
Loss of revenue for public schools

I could go on, but can make my point without doing so. The problem is more than poverty; it's concentrated poverty. This means that poor white children attend better quality schools than poor black kids. So we can't say that the issue has to do with parenting yet. We haven't accounted for the type and quality of school the child attends. And let me point out the inverse. Right? Cause by concentrated poverty, we don't mean the neighborhood is 100% poor. One survey goes only as high as 37.2%. So it's not just poor black kids who're affected by concentrated poverty; it also middle-class black kids who have to attend poorly funded schools.

Now, the following is off-topic but I do wanna make a point: this is why black folks by and large don't trust people who want to leave everything to the state and local governments. White folks haven't exorcised themselves of racism, and leaving issues to state and local government lands us in raggedy-ass schools.

But I digress. Care to learn the impact concentrated poverty has on school achievement (ppt)?

Loss of successful role models: Adults that a child sees are unemployed or working low-paying jobs
Loss of access to networks to get jobs
Loss of resources to support high-quality schools
Schools with many poor children need even more services (language training, special education, social work and counseling) but generally are more poorly funded than schools serving middle-class students

So before we start criticizing the parenting skills of black parents, let's take a look at the whole picture. It's not just about poverty, and I haven't even addressed racism. Teachers' racism. The racism in the curriculum of soft subjects like history and literature. Racism in school discipline. Etc. Etc. And so on. Or, even the racism of so readily jumping to conclusions about black parenting before looking at the impact of concentrated poverty. Like I just said in an previous post, when you hear hoof beats, think horses, not zebras. But if "horses" means some like black people don't know how to raise their kids, then maybe you should go for "zebras."

Another Issue I Have with Tea Pots!

2010-11-09T16:28:00.000-05:00

It just accord to me, so I gotta share it now before I forget. I'm sure someone has probably addressed this somewhere else, but another problem I have is that there's not policy behind the rhetoric.

They're concerned about government spending. Okay, what programs do you really wanna cut? I saw a few thousand or so amening Glenn Beck's assertion that in order to get the country back to where it's supposed to be, they may have to sacrifice their own social security and medicare benefits. Are they willing to do that?

A commenter named Teila made an interesting point in response to the open question post (not the page): government should only do for people what they can't do for themselves. So you know what? I'm going to list some of the things President Obama, but more generally and importantly progressives, want to see government do:

protect consumers from being defrauded and exploited by banks and Wall St in general.
protect employees from being exploited cheated out of earnings by employers and investors.
make sure everyone pays their due share of taxes rather than use offshore accounts to avoid paying up.

You know, there've been comparisons made between taxes and slavery. Setting aside the racial callousness, what's more akin to working hard and not receiving the earnings you deserve or getting to spend what you've earned how you want is our current labor market. You may be okay with losing your job or losing benefits and earnings just so some cat on Wall St or in Aspen gains another .1% increase in his dividends. I'm not.

But I digress.

make sure everyone has access to quality healthcare.
ensure merit really does count. That what matters is what you know not who you know or what you look like.
ensure everyone has the opportunity to come to know something!
make sure there's a solid economy for future generations.
make sure there's a solid planet for future generations. (Really people. We need to go green.)

I could go on, but here's the point: we want government to do for the citizenry what we can't do individually. Or better yet, we want government to do the things that're best done "in bulk" than individually. At this point, we're not where government is doing everything we wants and can therefore take everything we have, to quote Teila's quote of Gerald Ford. (I avoided being snide about this, but it has to be said. It's not as though Truman is known as one of the better presidents. As far as I'm away, he only finished Nixon's term and lost the following election. It's not even as though he's a stalwart of conservatism.) Right now, what we have is something more like the mob. We pay "protection money" and are "protected" (national security and all), but when it comes to anything else, we're more or less out on our own. Maybe that's fine for a lot of people. That's not cool with me. Sorry, accept that I'm really not.

But anyway, back to my original point: for all this brouhaha, how exactly do tea pots and kettles plan to get there? What's the policy behind the rhetoric?

Look at that Zebra! [Improved]

2010-11-07T23:33:00.018-05:00

No, I am not about to post about zebras! Nor am I about to discuss the importance of working together across races and ethnicities to create a just society. I just figured for fun, why not throw up a pic! (May start using pics more often. Kinda like having a pic.)

But I do have a point. And it this: are you familiar with the law of parsimony or Occam's razor. Maybe you've heard the saying, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras?" What it boils down to is that the simplest answer is the right answer.

I bring this up because I've heard people respond to a description of the impact of racism by saying something to the effect, "Have you considered any other explanation?" I find that response insulting, as though I'm so intellectually lazy or even so stupid that despite the obviousness of other explanations, I choose race for the hell of it. In fact:

. . . contrary to popular belief, research indicates that people of color are actually reluctant to allege racism, be it on the job, or in schools, or anywhere else.
Far from "playing the race card" at the drop of a hat, it is actually the case (again, according to scholarly investigation, as opposed to the conventional wisdom of the white public), that black and brown folks typically "stuff" their experiences with discrimination and racism, only making an allegation of such treatment after many, many incidents have transpired, about which they said nothing for fear of being ignored or attacked (10) [refers to an in-article footnote]. Precisely because white denial has long trumped claims of racism, people of color tend to underreport their experiences with racial bias, rather than exaggerate them.

So when you're wondering about all the disparities throughout American society, "think horses, not zebras." Now, if "horses" for you means that African Americans maybe aren't as intelligent or just don't have enough self-initiative, something like that - that's the racism we're pointing out to you.

Just In: Felony Convictions Hurt Employment Opportunities

2010-11-06T15:34:00.001-04:00

"Eh, duh," you say. (H/t Tim Wise)

So obviously, I'm hoping to make a point, right.

EAGLE, Colorado — A financial manager for wealthy clients will not face felony charges for a hit-and-run because it could jeopardize his job, prosecutors said Thursday.

Eagle, Colorado? Where have I heard . . . oh, yeah! That's where Kobe Bryant was charged with rape. But surely there must be a different DA. Kobe's case was seven years ago.

One would tend to think so. But . . .

Haddon and Hurlbert have squared off before. Haddon was one of Kobe Bryant's defense attorneys, with lead attorney Pamela Mackey, when Bryant faced sexual assault charges in Eagle County. Hurlbert was the lead prosecutor in that case.

Figure that out and get back to me. No seriously, cause that doesn't make sense. Cents, yes. Sense, no.

Let's Be Honest with Ourselves

2010-11-03T22:34:00.000-04:00

via Racism Review

Would you be willing to admit or accept (insert group)
• To close kinship by marriage?
• To my club as personal friend?
• To live on the same street as my neighbor?
• To be a co-worker in the same occupation?
• To citizenship in my country?
• As only visitors in my country? Or
• Would you be willing to exclude (insert group) from my country?

I'm not shy about it. With only a few exceptions, I prefer to keep my free time and space minority dominated. Don’t get it twitted, though. I graduated from UNC and attended multiracial churches back in college. But in general, I prefer spaces where I’m normal. Or, to put in better, spaces where I know I’m not being judged.

Degrees of Freedom: Prejudice and Bigotry as Temporal Levels of Social Distance
By Yoku Shaw-Taylor

If the Nobel Committee issued prizes for social science research, Robert Park, Ernest Burgess and Emory Bogardus would have been top candidates for contributions to the empirical study of prejudice and bigotry. The social distance scale, conceptualized initially by Park and Burgess, and later quantitatively measured by Bogardus, is an elegant method for calibrating how members of groups are willing to interact with members of other groups. The cumulative scale describes progressive degrees of social contact or social distance. Many sociologists of course know about this scale and it is one of the instruments in our tool box; but the recent brouhaha over Juan Williams’s statements about ‘people in Muslim garb’ brought to my mind the ubiquity of prejudice and stereotype.

Is it easier for Americans to stereotype one another? Is stereotype or profiling (born of a certain prejudging) a part of the grand American narrative? How different are we in this characteristic from other countries? It is not right, using this short-hand to characterize people we don’t know; it is convenient to do so in the anonymity of public spaces. September 11 has only given some of us more reason to do so. This happens on a daily basis and it signals that we are still very much socially distant from one another. Muslim Americans and Arab Americans are only now finding this out because they have become targets of this public mood for prejudging. This is the subtext of assimilation; if one cannot get past profiling, prejudging and stereotyping, one begins to do the same thing – a cycle that only feeds into how distant we are from one another.

Below is the social distance scale – I ask all who read this piece to honestly measure their temporal levels of social distance. Pick any group, any group at all and insert them into the scale and measure your level of prejudice and bigotry as an American (or not) towards this group. Pick more than one group – indeed, pick all the identifiable racial/ethnic groups in America. And, be true to yourself! For each question, give a yes or no response. My contention is that the degrees of freedom yielded by the dichotomous values you score will not vary by much from one group to the next (pardon my corruption of the term!).

Would you be willing to admit or accept (insert group)
• To close kinship by marriage?
• To my club as personal friend?
• To live on the same street as my neighbor?
• To be a co-worker in the same occupation?
• To citizenship in my country?
• As only visitors in my country? Or
• Would you be willing to exclude (insert group) from my country?

Social distance is both metaphoric and geographic – we do not live physically close to one another and our prejudices keep us psycho-socially separate.

Cause I've Had It with Progressive Nihilists!

2010-11-02T12:12:00.000-04:00

When a Picture's Worth 1000 Words . . .

2010-11-01T16:02:00.001-04:00

It saves me a whole lot of time!!
(h/t profgeo)

PLEASE CHECK OUT THE LINK SO I HOPEFULLY WON'T BE SUDED USING THIS POLITICAL CARTOON!!

A House Divided Cannot Stand

2010-11-01T00:32:00.001-04:00

Toot, toot!

Prometheus6 thought enough of a comment I left to make it a post. So yeah, I'm tooting my little horn. And I'll share the comment with you. I linked the posts I'm referring to:

THIS IS COMMENTARY ON THIS POST AND THE EARLIER "BOEHNERIZATION OF OBAMA" POST
Posted October 31st, 2010 by Blaque Swan
[P6: No1KState posted this comment after changing her tag to Blaque Swan. I promoted it to a post because she's talking about a major concern of mine]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I'm assuming that wherever we come down on Obama, we're all progressives, right? Then what are we really arguing about? It's not as though those on the "Probama" side think he's been a stalwart of progressive legislation and policy. Cause seriously. He could end DADT and federal prosecution of minor marijuana crimes by executive order. We all agree that the stimulus wasn't large enough, nor financial reform strong enough. Blah, blah, blah.

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

We're arguing about who's to blame for our current electoral state. Obama for not being strong enough? Congressional Dems for being too moderate? Rank and file progressives for not remaining engaged? All of those arguments have some merit, right? So what are we going to do next? Are we going to start arguing over blame-percentages? And in this scenario where we assign percentages of blame, do we split 100% equally or is it a percentage of what they should have done?

Let's say we go with assigning percentage blame based on what each party should have done. Before we begin arguing over whether Obama did 5% or 50%, we need to agree on what represents 100%. Does 100% represent every single progressive idea across the board, not to mention keeping Van Jones and not firing Shirley Sherrod? Or, does 100% represent his campaign pro . . .

Oh, damn. The dumb-dumbs won the House and picked up 6 senate seats.

Who're we going to blame for that?

Which is all to say I agree with George Soros (I read the entire article you suggested, ptc.). Well, I agree with him as much as I could understand. (How does a country devalue its currency?) In addition, I just feel like no matter what Obama did or didn't do, we have a country of racists and dumb-dumbs, and the groups aren't mutually exclusive. It would take more than Obama doing 100% of what Krugman suggested to effectively change the political discourse. Obama could take a few more lessons from George Lakoff, but I'm not sure even that would help. Because where dumb-dumb ends, racist begins. To really change the conversation would take progressives literally teaching their dumb-dumb neighbors how economics really works. We'd have to keep drilling facts such as the fact that all income groups do better under Dem presidents than Republican presidents. We'd have to keep calling our congressional representatives. We'd have to get involved in local and state politics. I could go on and still haven't delved issues of race. Make no mistake about it. We do have to deal with race. The principle reason we don't have a German or Sweden-type economy is race. And it seems like some European countries will start cutting into their social safety net principally because of race.

So why are we wasting time and energy arguing amongst each other at this point in time? Really. Some of these arguments could've been saved for Nov 3. No matter how pissed off you are at Obama for not being a stronger progressive, you do plan to vote, right? Or, maybe you think have a Republican House and a more jacked-up Senate will help Obama. That position does have a fairly strong argument if you care to take that bet. Emphasis on bet.

Rather than arguing amonst each other, shouldn't we be trying to educate the dumb-dumbs and disabuse them of their dumbness? Shouldn't we be mobilizing the vote? If you can do all these things, more power to you. I can't. Health issues.

For-Profit Education?

2010-10-31T23:51:00.000-04:00

For-profit education? Talk about unAmerican. And at taxpayer expense? Okay, well, that is American.

Let's also remember what life is like in places where the only education is limited to the private, for-profit sector of the economy. . . . Not pretty, huh?

via Portside:

When For-Profits Target Low-Income Students
Arnold L. Mitchem, 10.26.10, 12:00 PM ET

The current policy debate over federal regulation of for-profit higher-education institutions has generated a lot of heat, but very little light. I believe the object of concern is misplaced. We should not be focusing on whether for-profits are being unfairly targeted by policymakers--especially those who may be looking to exploit a hot-button issue just prior to Election Day. Rather, we should give thoughtful consideration to the broader issue of educational equity at these institutions.

Here are the facts: Low-income Americans are disproportionately represented at for-profit institutions. This class (and sometimes racial and ethnic) stratification is troubling for two reasons. First, there is little evidence that this stratification is the result of the informed choice of students or their families. Second, in far too many cases, students who enroll in programs at proprietary institutions do not improve their life chances or increase their social mobility. In actuality, these students graduate at very low rates and with few or no viable employment options.

I write on the basis of my own experience of nearly 30 years as head of the nation's only organization representing the interests of low-income students as well as minority and first-generation students and students with disabilities. I personally know the circumstances under which they encounter challenges to access and success in postsecondary education.

Low-income families know very little about the range of postsecondary options and the college admissions process. If discussions of college rankings, the sticker price of college versus the actual price, the transferability of credits, and the vagaries of financial aid confuse families with resources, imagine how low-income youth and adults with no college experience feel. In short, when low-income, first-generation students enter the college marketplace, they do not do so as informed consumers equipped to negotiate with sales representatives. Rather students often believe the "salesperson"--individuals serving as an "admissions counselor" at for-profits--who encourage them to take on high-interest loans likely to be defaulted.

The sophisticated marketing and recruiting techniques of many for-profit institutions thereby take on a predatory nature, similar to what we have seen in the subprime mortgage crisis in the mortgage industry. These high-pressure transactions, in which institutions promise quick degrees and jobs in exchange for high tuition, are deeply dishonorable because there is an inherent inequity in the relationship between the low-income consumer and the industry. Students often have no knowledge of comparable programs offered by public colleges in their communities at lower cost so they are unable to judge the true value of the for-profit certificate or degree program.

As troubling as such an unequal relationship between buyer and seller may be, it might be justified if the seller's product offered the promised outcome. But in too many cases, students leave for-profit institutions in worse circumstances than they were before they enrolled.

There are several scenarios for students enrolled in for-profit institutions that I have seen played out and that I described to members of Congress in September:

(1) The school holds out the lure of high-paying jobs in a field, but either no such jobs exist or they require education or experience beyond what the school provided;
(2) students enroll in a program that requires skills they do not have at the time of matriculation, so, in short order, they drop out with no degree or certificate and left still saddling a large loan obligation;
(3) students enroll in a program under the assumption that credits are transferable to a public or nonprofit, but they aren't, so they pay twice to attain their ultimate academic goals;
(4) and finally, students are badly served by for-profits when their education does not provide a real or significant boost in earnings.

Paying back student loans over a long period of time sometimes rules out the possibility of making other financial investments that will create a better life for an individual's family such as buying a house, or saving for retirement or for one's children's education.

The federal government, in particular the U.S. Department of Education, is right to be concerned that for-profit institutions are preying on low-income students, and as recipients of federal grants and loans, they are doing so at taxpayers' expense. There is both a fiscal and fiduciary responsibility--a moral obligation--to see that these students are protected from abuse and that federal funds are being expended properly.

I question, too, the rising proportion of federal grant aid that is being channeled to the private sector. Analysts and policymakers alike are rightly scrutinizing the "privatization" of education and the rapid growth of the for-profit institutions whose revenue streams are supported by public dollars.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

But policymakers must also address the larger questions of access and equity that the well-publicized cases of unsavory practices illuminate. If the playing field is to be truly leveled, low-income students must have access to the full range of postsecondary institutions--not just the ones that are savvy enough to get their recruiting information into students' hands. Ensuring college opportunity for all requires that the nation make a substantial investment in pre-college counseling and advising for low-income, first-generation students and their families--a much larger effort than we have undertaken to date.

Arnold Mitchem is president of the Council for Opportunity in Education, the only national organization dedicated to furthering the expansion of postsecondary opportunities for low-income and first-generation students.

Some Interesting Findings about the More "Antique" Tea Pots

2010-10-30T16:39:00.000-04:00

I haven't forgotten y'all! I've just been thinking. Taking a break from debate and just thinking. I came across the following article and found it quite thought-provoking.

Why Are Elders Stirring the Tea Party Movement?
Robert W. Stock
Contributor

(Oct. 30) -- The tea party skews old.

Media descriptions of the conservative movement's protests are incomplete without references to a Walmart's worth of wheelchairs and walkers amid a sea of gray heads. Surveys of tea party supporters have found that half are over age 55 and something like a third are 65 or older.

Why?

Many experts have suggested that the elders were motivated by fear that the Obama administration will cut their Social Security or Medicare payments. But new research into the roots of elders' political and cultural attitudes suggests there may be other factors at work as well. . . .

Read the rest of the article here.

Love to Say I Told You So

2010-10-21T00:44:00.001-04:00

If tea pots and kettles aren't racists, then they're idiots! Even though I think a whole bunch of'em are both.

h/t Tim Wise

By Tuesday morning the heat was becoming too much for Bartholomew to handle. Second District GOP chair Gary Byler told the Virginian-Pilot that Bartholomew "agreed to resign because the e-mail had become a distraction to the Nov. 2 election." He offered this to the paper by way of explanation for the racist email:
The e-mail was dated March 15 and sent from the address that Bartholomew uses as party chairman. Bartholomew forwarded it without reading the contents when "he was first getting familiar with the Internet," Byler said.
Byler assured the paper that Bartholomew is "not a racist."

He's "not a racist" for forwarding this email by "accident":

MY DOG

I went down this morning to sign up my Dog for welfare.

At first the lady said, "Dogs are not eligible to draw welfare".

So I explained to her that my Dog is black, unemployed, lazy, can't speak English and has no frigging clue who his Daddy is.

So she looked in her policy book to see what it takes to qualify...

My Dog gets his first check Friday.

Is this a great country or what?

But that's not all the racism going on! A Florida state representative is working on a Arizona-like immigration bill with one major difference:

Even if an officer has "reasonable suspicions" over a person's immigration status, the bill says, a person will be "presumed to be legally in the United States" if he or she provides "a Canadian passport" or a passport from any "visa waiver country."

What are the visa waiver countries? Other than four Asian nations, all 32 other countries are in Western Europe, from France to Germany to Luxembourg.

Yeah, so basically, if you're white, you're good. And I guess if you look Latino but are really from Spain, you're good. And if you look African or Caribbean but are really from England or France, you're good. And if you really are a Latino here illegally, but you're a Canadian national, you're good, too.

But just so you don't forget, America is not a white supremacist country. We just do a lot of things a white supremacist country would do.

Passing on Capitalism

2010-10-16T21:55:00.010-04:00

All in all, one might say it wasn't an episode in which capitalism cloaked itself in glory. That is, unless one is Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page director and "Wonder Land" columnist Daniel Henninger. In his October 14 column, "Capitalism Saved the Miners: The Profit = Innovation Dynamic Was Everywhere at the Mine Rescue Site," Henninger argued that the miners owed their rescue to a special drill bit developed by a private U.S. company. That was his entire argument. . . .

It'd be funny if it weren't so sad. One of those "laughing just to keep from crying" situations. Besides, I thought one problem with current liberalism was our deification of "the state." But blind faith in capitalism is . . . good? via Portside:

'Capitalism Saved the Miners'? Only in Wonder Land

10/15/2010 by Steve Rendall

After the miners' rescue Wednesday, talk in Chile turned to mine safety and the conduct of Compañía Minera San Esteban, the corporation that owns the San Jose mines where the miners were trapped. On Thursday, Chilean President Sebastián Piñera publicly addressed safety issues, vowing "fundamental changes in how businesses treat their workers."

Stories about San Esteban's horrible record are legion (e.g., here and here). The company has been host to a number of deaths at its mines in recent years, and accusations of safety violations including the charge that it ignored orders to install safety equipment--a condition of its reopening after a previous accident--which might have made an earlier escape possible for some miners.

Moreover, during the debacle, San Esteban, which played no part in the miners' rescue, pled poverty and claimed it could not pay the trapped miners wages. As London's Independent reported, San Esteban "says it has no money to continue paying their wages, let alone cope with the lawsuits that will inevitably arise from the ordeal."

All in all, one might say it wasn't an episode in which capitalism cloaked itself in glory. That is, unless one is Wall Street Journal deputy editorial page director and "Wonder Land" columnist Daniel Henninger. In his October 14 column, "Capitalism Saved the Miners: The Profit = Innovation Dynamic Was Everywhere at the Mine Rescue Site," Henninger argued that the miners owed their rescue to a special drill bit developed by a private U.S. company. That was his entire argument.

Henninger's real motive seemed to be to use the miners' rescue to rebut a bit of Obama campaign rhetoric in which the president had sarcastically dismissed notion of unqualified faith in markets:

The basic idea is that if we put our blind faith in the market and we let corporations do whatever they want and we leave everybody else to fend for themselves, then America somehow automatically is going to grow and prosper.
Henninger’s response to Obama's remark:

Uh, yeah. That's a caricature of the basic idea, but basically that's right. Ask the miners.
I'm sure the miners are thankful for the heroic drill bit, but their opinion of the role of capitalism in their debacle might be less breathless than Henninger's. Indeed, most of the miners have weighed in on the central capitalist actor in the story: At least 29 of the 33 miners' families have filed lawsuits against San Esteban.

Also inconvenient for Henninger's argument: The rescue was run by the Chilean government and its relevant ministries, not by the capitalist company. Oh, and the U.S. government's space agency, NASA, also played a crucial role, designing the rescue capsule and consulting on safety issues.

Moreover, it's worth noting that, while Chile's larger, government-owned mines have relatively good safety records, the same cannot be said for its smaller, capitalist-run mines, such as San Esteban's.

No one argues that capitalism does not produce new innovations (while sometimes stifling innovations too), but in Henninger's capitalist Wonder Land, the bad actions of capitalists, as well as the the good and vital acts of governments, are banished to the real world.

You Need to Vote if Only to Protect Your Right to Do So

2010-10-14T20:50:00.000-04:00

There's no evidence of voter fraud. Meanwhile, evidence of voter suppression is overwhelming. And all I can think is thank God my life is in His hands are not theirs.

In Hot Political Climate, Election Experts Want 'Voter Fraud' Watchdogs To Be Clear On Rules

Ryan J. Reilly
September 20, 2010, 9:56AM

As Tea Party groups take up the torch of voter fraud ahead of the midterm elections, a new poll shows that campaigns in prior elections to exaggerate the voter fraud issue have had an effect on public opinion. Meanwhile, advocates for low-income and minority voters are voicing concerns that the individuals planning to show up at polling stations to keep an eye out for those they think are illegitimate voters might be unclear on election law.

While the much-maligned ACORN no longer exists, a recent Public Policy Poll finds that one in five Americans thinks that it "will steal the election to keep Democrats in control of Congress this fall," concerns which Steve Benen dubbed "zombie fears."

Events like the voter fraud panel at LibertyXPO can contribute to the perception that voter fraud is a major problem, say experts. That event was hosted by one self-described ACORN whistle-blower (who was reportedly fired from the organization for running up personal expenses on her company credit card) and featured concerns from one audience member who thought her mailman was stealing her ballots.

Such fears have consequences. A recent report issued by Demos and Common Cause found that several states make it much too easy for a voter to challenge the rights of another voter at a polling place, and there's a lack of clarity about how poll workers should handle such situations. Many states have "potentially burdensome voter identification laws" and poll workers can often be unaware of or confused about the state laws for voter identification.

"We just want to make sure that everyone is clear on the rules -- that voters know their rights, that these groups know what they are and aren't allowed to do," Tova Wang, Senior Democracy Fellow at Demos, said last week in a conference call with reporters.

"I think there are legitimate concerns that given the environment and given the rhetoric that we have seen over the last year and the mistrust not only of government but the mistrust of each other -- could lead to groups challenging people at the polls who they contend shouldn't be voting," Wang said.

The report identifies Arizona, Louisiana and Nevada as states with some of the most onerous voter identification laws.

Arizona "is a state which as we all know has a significant Hispanic population, and the laws in Arizona are particularly burdensome to vote there," said Bob Edgar, president of Common Cause. He said he would be concerned if any group was using voter identification laws to suppress voter turnout.

"There are a lot of really good people in the Tea Party who are angry for a variety of reasons," Edgar said. "Obviously there are fringe people, there are racists, there are other kinds of groups there. What we would be concerned about is any group -- whether it's the Tea Party, whether it's the Democratic Party, whether it's the Republican Party, whether it's the Independent Party or some cult group out using tactics that are abusive."

Wang also expressed concern that feats over voter fraud could lead to policies which prevent legitimate voters from casting ballots.

"Every single election there are these allegations of voter fraud that turn out to be mostly untrue and every year we find that there might be a very small handful of voter fraud cases but nothing on the order of what is alleged," Wang said. "Perennially, this is used to enact policies or advocate for policies which would disenfranchise voters -- voters of low income and voters of color."

"Given the political climate this year -- I'm not a political strategist and I can't read those tea leaves but I do know the voting process and I see what's gone on here in the last year and a half," Wang said.

The Demos and Common cause report, "Voting In 2010: Ten Swing States," is embedded below. And a tea pot ad is below the article over at TPM.

Voting in 2010: Ten Swing States

What Else Does Racism Look Like?

2010-10-14T15:19:00.000-04:00

Setting aside the ridiculous belief by some that President Obama has done too much for the black communitiy, the unemployment rate for African American teenagers is 50%. The unemployment rate for black adults is a little more than 16%. Notwithstanding that job opportunities have left many black communities; and, schools in these communities suck; and, white convicts have an equal or better chance of getting a job black men with no criminal record; and, of course, Fox; notwithstanding all that, people will find a reason to blame the black community for all this.

None of that is new, even to wouldn't blame racism for all those disparities. So this is very important: racism is never satisfied.

It's not enough to be a child prodigy and enter college when you're only 16. It's not enough to choose a college based on location, the amount of money offered, or the quality of the major you want to study. Nope. None of that's enough. So long as you choose an HBCU over, say Harvard, people will decide you're awfully dumb to be so smart.

Before I Forget: Frustrations with Conservatives

2010-10-13T15:50:00.000-04:00

What I find very frustrating is that they wreck the economy doing one thing, then wanna blast the Democrats for trying something else to fix the economy.

For example, taxes, okay? So, W Bush lowered taxes, especially tax rates for the top brackets and on capital gains. He farther deregulated the financial market. Now the economy isn't up to snuff, and conservatives want to argue that it's the wrong time to raise taxes on anyone or anything. That regulating the market would make the economy worse. I find their logic circular and false. It leaves me confused as to how they can claim to believe the things they say. I find much of their arguments more theory than reality-based. That adds to my confusion as well. I mean, what about the facts?

A great example of what I'm talking about comes from this discussion over P6's. And now that I think about it, conservatives and professed libertarians use the same sort of circular reasoning when it comes to race as demonstrated by a discussion I had last year with a guy named Darin Johnson over at RacismReview.

Did We Just Overcome a Little?: Sitcom The Game Returns via BET

2010-10-11T18:40:00.001-04:00

I don't think I'll say anything that someone else isn't saying. But I hope that repetition helps drive the point home. The good news is that The Game is come back! January 2011 on BET! Check your local listings. Don't get me wrong. It's not my very, very favorite black sitcom of all time. But it's certainly in the top 5 of recent years, and when it comes out in January, it will immediately be No1 of regular black sitcoms.

Wow!

I wrote about its cancellation last year, mentioning that I noticed a pattern with UPN and CW of starting with black sitcoms to build or rebuild viewership only to cancel them abruptly once they built a brand in mainstream America. I didn't realize I was really on to something networks don't just do intentionally, but as part of the whole business plan.

The Game was a victim of "narrowcasting," in which upstart or fledgling networks target a specific audience (like African Americans) to build a network brand and attract a larger audience with programming that features the targeted demographic paired with other groups. The network then disposes of its original audience in order to attract more "affluent" advertising dollars. Fox, UPN, WB and CW used this as a model to get their networks going, which led to the cancellation of shows popular among blacks, like In Living Color, Living Single, Moesha, Eve and Girlfriends.

I feel used. A little dirty. You?

So I'm relieved to know that BET is bringing the show back, not because BET is fledgling, but because it's good business. If it cancels the show, it'll do so because the viewership isn't there to maintain it; not because it never intended to have black sitcoms in the long haul. Right? And here's the key thing to remember: the top decisions makers are black. That makes a huge difference. Huge!

Now, to be sure, BET is still a division of Viacom, it's not an independently owned black network - though you can buy stock in Viacom. And while I hesitate to get BET full-throated endorsement, it does seems as though it's coming up from "thugs and hos" of recent years.

That aside, here's the moral: we overcome when we control our destiny, our future, our selves. When we're the HNIC, unbeholden to white/mainstream America, we do good and right by ourselves.

It's kinda strange that even after the 60s, sports and entertainment remain domains of black freedom and power, black rebellion and push back. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not a huge Lebron James fan and think "taking his talents to Miami" was a punk move. But as far as controlling his own destiny, I ain't mad. And if white folks keep hatin', I just may pull for the Mi3 after all.) Can you imagine what we could accomplish if we had wholesale control of our fates? When our life outcomes are no longer impacted by racism? Which is not to say that racism would be negligible; just that it won't matter.

It doesn't matter how much you hate me if I can take care of myself. (Maybe that's why whites are against reparations: economic Independence means independence.) I'm not saying we need our own country, though that would be nice; just that we need our own independent economy.

Imagine this: black employees working for black employers of black-owned businesses and corporations. Black students being taught by black teachers in black schools headed by black principals and principles. Black patients being seen and treated by black doctors in some form of single-payer healthcare. Yeah . . . Black jurors and black DAs and judges. Nice.

Take a deep breath and soak that in for a minute: black freedom.

Sweet, huh?

Sticks and Stones . . . but Words Can Kill

2010-10-08T23:34:00.002-04:00

I just think this is very important to remember. Washington Post's Richard Cohen, not that I'm a fan, writes:

The governor of Ohio, James Rhodes, demonized the war protesters. They were "worse than the Brownshirts and the communist element. . . . We will use whatever force necessary to drive them out of Kent."

And subsequently in 1970, four students were killed by the National Guard at Kent State. Now of course, I wonder if Neil Young wrote a song about the Birmingham bombing and if Cohen nearly cried everytime he read it. That notwithstanding, read entire of op-ed here.

No, I Haven't Finished Reading It Yet, But . . .

2010-10-08T16:01:00.000-04:00

I ask you, who do you think are the "lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it" who're making "very much" (emphasis mine)? By Rolling Stone's Matt Taibi:

Me?" he says proudly. "Oh, I'm a property appraiser. Have been my whole life."

I frown. "Are either of you on Medicare?"

Silence: Then Janice, a nice enough woman, it seems, slowly raises her hand, offering a faint smile, as if to say, You got me!

"Let me get this straight," I say to David. "You've been picking up a check from the government for decades, as a tax assessor, and your wife is on Medicare. How can you complain about the welfare state?"

"Well," he says, "there's a lot of people on welfare who don't deserve it. Too many people are living off the government."

"But," I protest, "you live off the government. And have been your whole life!"

"Yeah," he says, "but I don't make very much."

The Devil's Greatest Trick

2010-10-08T15:41:00.000-04:00

Again we see that racism denies historical and current facts. It, like the devil, denies its own existence. If you were born during Prohibition, I'll give you a pass on calling African-Americans "colored." But, you don't have to lynch a black person to be racist.

90-year-old Woman Asks Why "Colored People" Aren't Grateful

I get their point. It’s just not funny.

2010-10-07T09:48:00.000-04:00

via RacismReview:

http://www.easternecho.com/index.php/section/comics#img14

Debate over E. Michigan U. Klan Cartoon

By Joe

Inside Higher Education has an account of intense debates over a Klan cartoon run by the Eastern Michigan University student paper.

The newspaper editors gave the usual lame non-apology apology, which many also found hypocritical or offensive:

We understand the “You Are Here” cartoon may have offended some readers. We apologize for the lack of sensitivity some felt we showed for publishing the piece. The cartoon points out the hypocrisy of hate-filled people. Its intent was to ask how can someone show affection for one person while at the same time hating someone else enough to commit such a heinous act as hanging. We wish to remind readers that they are free to express their opinion on our discussion boards and we hope to continue to foster free thought and open discussion on campus and in the community. – The Eastern Echo
One sharp comment after the editorial was this:
The cartoon comes nowhere NEAR “pointing out hypocrisy.” The decision to publish that cartoon is a travesty, no matter how you measure it. In a civilized society, we have to recognize that some things are never funny. If you don’t know what these are, then you need to go back to school.

So, the editors apologize because “some felt” they showed a lack of sensitivity, not because they really did show a lack of sensitivity. One wonders if they would similarly allow a cartoonist mocking of some people in Nazi uniforms making silly superficial comments near a major German Nazi death camp like Auschwitz. I doubt it.

It appears that these students, including the cartoonist, need a good set of lessons about the scale and brutality of the thousands of lynchings that whites have conducted over the last century to the present day. For many African Americans and others that tree and noose imagery in the cartoon conjure up painful memories of brutal killings of black Americans (and some other Americans of color) by mobs of white Americans. About 3,513 lynchings of black men and 76 of black women were recorded for the years 1882 to 1927, but many more did not get recorded.

Joe writes more, but here're my thoughts:

Many lynchings did play out as entertain as well as terror. Family outings, picnics, etc. Some were advertised in out-of-state papers. I think the first food carts or something like it started during this time. So it’s perfectly reasonable to think that perhaps some couples did meet at a lynching.

As strict commentary, it’s poignant. I wouldn’t describe the dichotomy as hypocricy, but racism does present a duality where some people are worthy of, say, political asylum whereas others as not.

The problem with the cartoon is that it’s supposed to be funny. It’s not funny. Imagery aside, it’s obvious that someone died – that’s what a lynching is. When is murder funny? Taking them at their word that they wanted to start a serious converation, they should’ve used one of the pictures from the WITHOUT SANTUARY project on the front page above the fold. I think the best way to deal with this is for someone to teach them how their on duality, the professed desire to illustrate the workings of racism contrasted by their own demonstrated lack of . . . I’m not sure of the right word. Do you really have to be sensitive to understand that murder isn’t funny? Are they not aware that lynching imagery is representative of murder and terror, and if so, what does that say about American society, education, and collective memory?

I don’t know. I my mind, I can only imagine these young, probably Obama-supporters, retreating to “intent” in response to all the negative action and becoming conservatives. I can hear them arguing that they’re not racist because they voted for Obama/have black friends/have dated black classmates. But that’s how racism works. An individual can hold simultaneously incongrous thoughts. It’s called cognitive dissonance. They need to understand that the ability to demonstrate affection for other whites didn’t mean lynchers couldn’t also hate those deemed “inferior,” nor does their affection for each other excuse their psychopathy in celebrating murder, torture, and terror. No one, I hope, would argue, “Yeah, they throw a fair for the lynching. But they’re really good people.” In that same way, people’s intent doesn’t excuse their impact, as it were. Whatever their intent, they should’ve known even intuitively that such imagery would not be well-received. You don’t have to be a black person or a person of color to be offended. You just have to be a person.

I get their point. It’s just not funny.

Racism in the Recent Forclosure Crisis? Eh, Duh

2010-10-05T10:27:00.001-04:00

While other economic studies have concluded that leveraged refinancing, overbuilding, collapsing home prices and a poorly regulated mortgage market were primarily responsible for the rise in foreclosures, the authors of a new Princeton University study argue that the foreclosure crisis also had racial dimensions.

[. . .]

“While policy makers understand that the housing crisis affected minorities much more than others, they are quick to attribute this outcome to the personal failures of those losing their homes — poor credit and weaker economic position,” noted Douglas Massey, the study's other author and a professor at Woodrow Wilson.

“In fact, something more profound was taking place; institutional racism played a big part in this crisis.”The authors call on the federal government to take stronger steps to rid U.S. real estate and lending markets of discrimination via amendment of the Civil Rights Act with enforcement mechanisms to uncover discrimination and sanction those who discriminate. The pair recommends sending "testers" — black and white purchasers into the marketplace to test whether they are treated differently.

Tim Wise's Facebook page led me to the article, Princeton study: Institutional Racism Played Role in Foreclosure Crisis by Kerry Curry. The title pretty much explains it all, but just in case:

The study found that from 1993 to 2000, the share of subprime mortgages going to minorities increased from 2% to 18%. The authors argue that residential segregation created a niche of minority clients who were marketed risky subprime loans.

"Four decades after passage of the Fair Housing Act, residential segregation remains a key feature of America’s urban landscape. Levels of black segregation have moderated since the civil rights era, but declines are concentrated in metropolitan areas with small black populations," the study notes.

Findings show that such black segregation, and to a lesser extent Hispanic segregation, are powerful predictors of the number and rate of foreclosures in the United States — even after removing the effects of a variety of other market conditions such as average creditworthiness, the degree of zoning regulation, the overall rate of subprime lending, or coverage under the Community Reinvestment Act, an act passed in the 1970s to reduce redlining.

Minority-dominant neighborhoods continue to be underserved by mainstream financial institutions, while predatory lenders are commonplace in such neighborhoods, the study notes.

All I Want for November Is to Vote

2010-10-04T11:23:00.000-04:00

Voter Suppression 2010 Style Democratic Strategist

Democrats have plenty to worry about over the next five weeks, but it nonetheless behooves Dems to get up to speed on the latest voter suppression scams. In that regard, Demos and Common Cause have partnered to present a must-read report on the topic, "Voting in 2010: Ten Swing States: Problematic election laws and policies in ten swing states could impact enough voters to determine election outcomes."

(PDF Executive Summary here)

The report profiles ten states (AZ, KY, CO, IL, LA, MI, MO, NV, NC and OH), where close elections are expected. The report focuses on laws and policies built into the structure of state election codes, rather than the illegal suppression practices that popped up in FL and OH during recent presidential elections.
The fact sheet on Kentucky, for example, reveals the obstacles Democratic candidates face in that state, including cutting off registration 28 days before the election, draconian felon disenfranchisement disqualifying 24 percent of African Americans, no legal mandate to disseminate voter information and a poor record of complying with the legal requirement to register people at public assistance agencies.
The report also credits each state for "exemplary voting laws" where applicable.
There are also reports of a voter caging operation underway in Wisconsin. According to Karoli's post, "Voter Suppression in Wisconsin, Courtesy of the GOP and Americans for Prosperity" at CrooksandLiars.com,

Here's how it works: A mailer is sent to registered voters. Any mailers returned by the post office are put in a database and those voters are submitted to be purged from voting rolls. Of course, the targets are never Republican voters. They're Democrats, and generally minority voters in particular....One Wisconsin Now has uncovered this plot with evidence, but don't assume this is limited to Wisconsin. I guarantee you it isn't. They are targeting as many states as they can, but particularly swing states. Expect Ohio, Pennsylvania, Nevada, Colorado, Arizona just to name a few to have the exact same operations afoot.

And here's a recent report on voter suppression in Texas.

In addition to the aforementioned laws and policies, and 'caging,' Dems should be ready for other suppression practices, like switching poll places, intimidation, parking obstruction, misleading and incorrect poll information, inferior computer equipment at polls in minority neighborhood polling places, Stephen Ansolabehere and Eitan Hersh also have a contribution to the topic in their "Early and Often" post at the Boston Review, in which they note,

Registration problems create barriers to voting and make it difficult for administrators to communicate with voters, identify voters at the polls, and audit elections after the fact. Reforms following the 2000 election sought to improve the accuracy and currency of the voter-registration lists. Most important, all states now have statewide voter files. So how good are the files today?... This summer the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University and the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project issued the first comprehensive, nationwide analysis of the quality of information stored on voter registration lists...Nationwide, approximately 1 in 16 entries on the registration lists is unmailable. The magnitude of the problem varies greatly throughout the country. In California, Massachusetts, and Washington, D.C., about 1 in 50 entries is problematic, but in Arkansas, that number is 1 in 5.

The authors provide a chart ranking every state. This is not just about incompetence and sloppy registration management. The states are all well-aware of their rankings and the reasons for it, and in most cases it's a matter of political manipulation -- almost always to the detriment of Democrats.

Posted by J. P. Green on September 27, 2010 9:10 AM

Another Example of Race(ism) in Sports Commentating? (Refined)

2010-10-04T10:50:00.001-04:00

(Refinement) Today, Oct 15, Ritchie demonstrated what I like about him: truth-telling. The problem with the Dallas Cowboys lies with their head coach, who, if you haven't noticed, is white. But it's not just that he goes after a white coach, cause what he says would be true even if the head coach weren't white.

Like I say below, I normally wouldn't even have written about his commentary on Batch and Kolb had I not been working on a new page already. And yeah, you'd think Batch would be ahead of Kolb, but at the end of the day, they were both rusty. That's what kind of stuck in my craw about Ritchie's commentary. I do wanna be clear that I don't think of Ritchie as a "racist" as defined by the mainstream. Just as a former football player who may not be completely divorced of his white-identity and racial-frame, but is significantly better than the typical white guy.

Generally, I like Jon Ritchie of ESPN. And definitely I ordinarily wouldn't be writing this because I'm usually doing something else about this time. I'm already working some a new blog page which is why I'm already here. But I can make this point very easily.

You can't on one hand criticize Charlie Batch and excuse Kevin Kolb for the same thing: being rusty. Just a few minutes ago (cause I'm doing sort of a "live blog") Ritchie asserted that Batch essentially caused the Pittsburg loss yesterday against Baltimore by not standing strong in the pocket. I think he used the phrase, "a deer in headlights," at some point. Then, hardly a moment later, Ritchie declared he couldn't blame Kolb for the Philadelphia loss because had had been benched (for a game, I'll note) and hadn't gotten the practice and snaps he needed to be prepared.

But would that be the same cause for Batch's dancing feet? Batch had only been the named started for a little over a week. Batch is a veteran, which I guess would be Ritchie's "I read Playboy for the articles" excuse, but he hadn't had any real game-time play since 2007. So what's the difference between him and Kolb?

Here's What Racism Looks Like: Albom v James

2010-10-03T15:25:00.002-04:00

Now, I wasn't going to post about Lebron James's Q-scores because it's sooo talked about in so many other places, including here at Racism Review. I didn't think, and still don't think, I had anything particularly unique to add to this discuss aside from co-signing a few others who had written about it. Though, I really love this insight:

A few weeks ago, airport-hopping while on vacation, I saw at least a half dozen Miami Heat, LeBron No. 6 jerseys -- all worn by black men. Given today's anti-LeBron climate, rocking his jersey is a fairly defiant act. It says, "Screw the rest of these folks, LeBron, I'm riding with you, homeboy." It might seem as if LeBron is on an island, right now, but something tells me he knows he's not alone.

And truth is, I don't really need to discuss it since I could use this most recent "black person attacked me!" false accusation, too. Cause really, however mentally ill Bethany Storro must be to attempt suicide by pouring drain cleaing fluid in her own face, she was clearly lucid enough to know that blaming a black woman would take the focus off herself because the media and public, if not the doctor and police, eat that kinda thing up. I don't know how things work in Canada, but here in the US, blaming a black person for a crime you committed can give you enough time to leave the country if you so chose. And I'm sorry, but one Tawanna Brawley does not equal Susan Smith, Charles Stuart, or Ashley Todd to name a few.

That said, I'm a big sports fan, and I really want ESPN to stop giving TV time to Mitch Albom, Tuesdays with Morrie aside. I haven't read it.

Okay. Here's my point. Today we live in an age driven by the myth of racial "colorblindness," both that society is and that individuals can be. Understand, noticing my racial background isn't the problem. Making assumptions about who I am or could be is a bit offensive; but depending on who you are, even that's not necessarily racist and not much the problem. Racism occurs when you attribute actual value to my phenotype, whether positive or negative. Besides, several studies, most notably this one by Harvard, talk about implicit racism. So just because you're consciously "ignoring" my dark(er) complexion doesn't mean your amygdala is, and I hope I don't have to prove to you the possibility that white Americans can be unknowingly (even though we try to tell them all the time) racist. It just seems reasonable that if we have subconscious cues in other areas of life, we'd have them in this particular area, whatever your reservations about Harvard's test may be. (Furthermore, whatever white people say in public, we know everything ain't "p.c." when no one's paying you any attention.)

So look. Racism does a few things . . . aside from the initial racist reaction. First, it dismisses complaints of racism:

Still, no one should be surprised that LeBron's answer was, "I think so at times. It's always, you know, a race factor."

Because sadly, when a high-profile African-American athlete hits an oil skid of controversy, it is all too easy to make race the culprit.

Then, it ignores the evidence. Albom says:

LeBron's popularity dropped steadily after that event. And recently it was announced that he was the sixth-most disliked athlete, according to the latest Q Score. Now, I don't put much stock in polls. But LeBron didn't become internationally famous with only black fans liking him, and he didn't reach this sudden infamy with only white fans bailing out (emphasis mine).

Even though:

According to The Q Scores Co., for non-blacks, LeBron's positive Q rating went from 18 percent in January to 10 percent in September and, more telling, his negative Q rating went from 24 percent to 44. Nearly half of the non-blacks in this country don't like the dude. Meanwhile, LeBron's positive Q rating among blacks went from 52 percent in January to 39 -- a noticeable drop -- but his negative Q rating barely budged, going from 14 percent to 15. Among African-Americans, says The Q Scores Co. executive vice president Henry Schafer, the shift in opinion was mostly to neutral (emphasis mine).

Interpret the numbers how you will, cause I doubt the neutrality is solely about black protectionism. But you can't deny that ". . . black Americans just didn't go along when the dominant storyline came to be that James was evil. His negative Q ratings, in other words, did not change much after The Decision." So unless Albom meant that other racial minorities besides blacks had bailed on James, and he well could have (but I doubt it), his assertion that James' sudden fall from grace can't be attributed to white fans is wrong. To my point, such is racism. Blatently indifferent, if not just impervious, to the facts.

Finally, there are some occasions when racism can lead, though unintentionally, to some truth-telling, even if it'll have to be teased out. Again, Albom:

In fact, to suggest that white people have some groupthink approach is racist in and of itself.

But we just saw the Q-scores everyone's refering to. So that must mean that . . . yes! White people do have some sort of groupthink, and it's their groupthink that is racist, not the acknowledgement of it.

And for the record, re: Albom's assertion that there's "similar vitriol" against Brett Favre, Favre is more liked and less hated than Lebron.

Stinking Gringo! (Updated)

2010-10-02T02:02:00.001-04:00

update: Here's racismreview discussion, and via racismreview Information on the 1946-1948 United States Public Health Service STD Inoculation Study

Yeah, an academic article is coming out soon by Susan M Reverby (synopsis in pdf) who found that the US infected Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea during the 1940s. Kinda like the Tuskegee experiment (update: different link via racismreview) for Latin America.

Now, don't get me wrong. This has nothing to do with AIDS in the black community and whether or not the US government invented AIDS. But the conspiracy theory doesn't sound so far fetched now.

See No Race, See No Racism: More Proof that Colorblind Ideology Doesn't Work

2010-09-29T19:44:00.001-04:00

Okay. So usually, I'm just sick. Since my last post, I've been sick and desparately trying to get my thoughts together. And quite honestly, if I spent less time commenting at other blogs, I probably would have more energy for my own blog. The problem with that is that I'm not sure of the quality of the work I'd do. I mean, here's an example of my free flowing thought process when trying to put my thoughts to words. I'll use bullet points to help us both out.

What are the tea pots complaining about? (Remember my open question for tea partyists?)
Taxes? That's the tangible negative impact this current administration and Congress have had? Maybe I'm not making my aforementioned question clear.
And for the love of all that's good and holy, paying taxes is NOT like slavery (You'll have to scroll down and/or search the word "slave").

It's a bit dismissive and racist to make that comparison anyway. Don't you think?

Oh, crap. What was my first point? Conservative hysteria and paranoia.
And how do they call themselves Christian?
And why do they get all pissy when their racism is called out? Cause really. Complaining about spending now?
What did Andrew Briebart just say?
Dinesh D'Souza wrote what?!
Of, forget it. My head hurts. What's up over at prometheus6/racismreview/timwise?

It's just that I have so many thoughts going through my head. It's hard to pick one thing to write on and then to stay focused on that thing. Especially if I'm trying to find some references to source.

But in my constant search for the truth, I did come across another very important new study (h/t Tim Wise) titled, "In Blind Pursuit of Racial Equality?" Basically, being colorblind renders us impotent to dealing effectively with race. Sure, there're other studies that find the same basic thing. But, with all those people who just swear that talking about, thinking about, or even acknowledging race/ism only increases the division between racial groups, the more evidence, the better.

Oh, I Wish I Were in the Land of Cotton

2010-09-15T09:30:00.000-04:00

Courtesy FITSNews, images from the National Federation of Republican Women (NFRW) annual fall Board of Directors meeting held in Charleston, S.C. last weekend (I'm linking to the site because I'm not too big on plagiarism. I came to the story via alternet.org, who provides really good news and info.):

(captions mine)

This is why having your black conservative friends argue that you should be able to use the n-word means nothing to me.

"The South shall rise again! Vote Republican!" (Not an actual quote. I hope not, anyway.)

I'on't know nothing bout birthing no babies!

Open Question to All Tea Partyists! Please Read and Respond

2010-09-12T17:55:00.000-04:00

Without giving personal information, please explain in as much detail as possible the tangible way in which this Congress and administration has negatively impacted your life.

Here's Your Free-Market at Work

2010-09-05T17:16:00.000-04:00

I very much disagreed with Bob Herbert's last op-ed piece. I've said before and say again, the numbers for black folks are no different than any other folks. Our problem is racism, and I refuse to pretend we should be super-human.

But he redeemed himself with this most recent piece. Not to say he knows me or would care what I have to say, but you get my gist:

September 3, 2010

Of Janitors and Kings

By Bob Herbert

Martha Escobar is staring into the cold, dark, unforgiving eyes of destitution.

Ms. Escobar is one of 16 janitors who were laid off from their jobs at a luxury complex in Los Angeles that houses some of the wealthiest tenants imaginable. JPMorgan Asset Management, a unit of the vast JPMorgan Chase empire, manages an intricate investment web that owns the buildings. The layoffs were ordered by a maintenance contractor, ABM Industries.

The Century Plaza Towers, which is part of the complex, crows on its Web site that it has “one of the most prestigious tenant rosters in the country, which includes some of America’s most prominent business leaders.” The janitors were required to keep things pristine for those prominent business leaders, who hardly ever noticed them.

They also did the mopping and scrubbing at 2000 Avenue of the Stars, which also is part of the complex and is home to an array of glittering businesses, including the Creative Artists Agency, an entertainment and sports powerhouse. The janitors were let go a few weeks ago, and, given the current job market, they have not been able to do much since then but suffer with anxiety.

Ms. Escobar is 41 years old and has two daughters, 14 and 10. She told me, through an interpreter, that she had enough money to pay September’s rent but not October’s. She has no savings. School is about to start, but she has no idea how she will pay for her girls’ uniforms.

“I have not been able to find another job,” she said.

What’s different about these layoffs is that the janitors are not going quietly. They have been vigorously protesting the callousness of their treatment — the way the rich people who employed them for the munificent sum of $13.50 an hour found it so easy to dump them on the scrap heap with the rest of America’s unemployed millions.

The janitors have marched and fasted outside the buildings they once cleaned. And Ms. Escobar and another laid-off janitor, Elba Polanco, were brought to New York City last week by the Service Employees International Union, which represents them, to bring their plight to the attention of Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. Mr. Dimon has made a fabulous living by, among other things, borrowing enormous sums of money to buy companies and then hurling people out of work.

In the real world of America’s increasingly two-tiered society, you have to laugh at the idea of these janitors trying to get the ear of Jamie Dimon, who counts his wealth by the hundreds of millions. He is royalty, and they are from the peasant class. Mr. Dimon’s universe is orders of magnitude different from the one that Martha Escobar is scrambling around in. He talks to the Geithners and Bernankes and Larry Summerses of the world. The paycheck Ms. Escobar used to get wouldn’t cover Jamie Dimon’s dinner tab.

While Ms. Escobar and her former co-workers are being scorched by the flames of unemployment, JPMorgan Chase’s second-quarter profit this year — profit, mind you — was $4.8 billion. (It got some help in the dark days of 2008 in the form of a $25 billion bailout from the federal government, but that has all been paid back.)

Ms. Escobar and Ms. Polanco spent Thursday trying to secure an audience with Mr. Dimon. They wanted to ask if there was any chance that they and at least some of their former co-workers could be rehired. Members of the clergy and a number of other supporters were with them when they showed up at the JPMorgan Chase headquarters at 270 Park Ave.

The palace guards asked if they had an appointment. They knew very well that an appointment was an impossibility. Ms. Escobar and Ms. Polanco were janitors. They were told to go away. They asked if they could leave some reading material for Mr. Dimon. Absolutely, the guards said. Leave whatever you’d like.

I called JPMorgan Chase to ask why the janitors had been fired and if the company was open to negotiations that could result in rehires. The response was cold, cold, cold. A spokesperson said JPMorgan Chase has nothing to do with the matter. “It’s a dispute between a vendor and its employees,” he said.

When I asked if he had any response to the protests, or the plight of the workers, or their effort to get their jobs back, he said, “The comments I gave you pretty much are a response.”

ABM Industries tried mightily not to respond at all, but when pressed, issued a statement through a public relations firm, Kekst and Company, saying discussions have been held with union officials regarding the workers. The company would not say if any could be rehired or why they were fired in the first place.

You know, not that I don't want as many people employed as possible - I'm a full employment proponent. That said, I don't understand JPMorgan Chase can afford to hire ABM Industries, who can afford to hire Kekst and Company; yet, no one, it seems, can "afford" to put these janitors back to work.

I don't think I can overemphasize this: the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom (1963) was a protest to just this sort of crass treatment of wage-earners.

More Thoughts and a Hip-Hop Response Re: Restoring "Honor"

2010-09-03T22:05:00.000-04:00

Glenn Beck's Redemption Song
Why Beck's Message at Saturday's Rally Is So Appealing
by Robert Jensen
- article after lyrics below

jasirix | August 30, 2010

This was part of a song Me and Paradise the Arkitech had intended to do as coverage of Glenn Beck's "Restoring Honor" rally, as well as Al Sharpton's "Reclaim the Dream" rally. The plan was to spit a rhyme from both perspectives then end with a verse from Dr. King himself. We eventually decided to scrap the idea and concentrate on our next video. However, a article by Legendary Hip-Hop Journalist Davey D inspired me to record my Dr. King verse to Kayne's Power and create a video around it.

Written from the perspective of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., Jasiri X responds to Glenn Beck's rally and the growing racial and economic divide in America. From the police's brutal beating of Jordan Miles in Pittsburgh and murder of Oscar Grant in Oakland, the increasing poverty and joblessness, to the ever expanding racial division lead by the rhetoric of those like Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin...Dr. King's dream has turned into a nightmare.

LYRICS
I can't believe 47 years after our march
Instead of more enlightened y'all going back to the dark
I thought this was the generation that would capture the spark
To see it even more divided is like a stab to the heart
So ashamed that they want to evoke my name
To try a stoke the flame and make folks deranged
Trying to find scape goats to blame
That lynch mob mentality was the reason from ropes we hanged
So why try to provoke the pain is ya hope and aim
To see the flag blood soaked and stained
These wicked special interests try to coach the game
Cause the wider the divide they have the most to gain
See my dream was far deeper than racial equality
Tried to rid America of the disgrace of poverty
And challenge the government to create the policies that would make equality not a fake democracy
That spend billions on war with such great hypocrisy
And that's the reason that I met fate on that balcony
That's the reason that I met my fate on the balcony
That's the real reason that I met my fate on that balcony
No fool like Beck should have all that power
Buying into all that fear makes you a coward
Whose gonna stand up for the poor in this hour

__________________________________________________________________________

Glenn Beck's Redemption Song: Why Beck's Message at Saturday's Rally Is So Appealing

by Robert Jensen
Monday, August 30, 2010

About halfway through Saturday’s “Restoring Honor” rally on the DC mall, I realized that I was starting to like Glenn Beck.

Before any friends initiate involuntary commitment proceedings, let me explain. It’s not that I like Beck, but more that I experienced his likeability. Whether or not he’s sincere, I came to admire his ability to project sincerity and to create coherence out of his incoherent rambling about religion, race, and redemption.

As a result, I’m more afraid of our political future than ever.

First, to be clear: Beck is the embodiment of everything I dislike about U.S. politics and contemporary culture. As a left/feminist with anti-capitalist and anti-empire politics, I disagree with most every policy position he takes. As a journalist and professor who values intellectual standards for political discourse, I find his willful ignorance and skillful deceit to be unconscionable.

So, I’m not in the market for a charismatic leader, and I haven’t been seduced by Beck’s televisual charm, nor have I given up on radical politics. Instead, I’m trying to understand what happened when I sat down at my computer on Saturday morning and plugged into the live stream of the event. Expecting to see just another right-wing base-building extravaganza that would speak to a narrow audience, I planned to watch for a few minutes before getting onto other projects. I stayed glued to my chair for the three-hour event.

My conclusion: What I saw was the most rhetorically and visually sophisticated political spectacle in recent memory. Beck was able to both connect to a right-wing base while at the same time moving beyond the Republican Party and the Tea Party movement, potentially creating a new audience for his politics. It’s foolish to make a prediction based on one rally, but I think Beck’s performance marked his move from blowhard broadcaster to front man for a potentially game-changing political configuration.

My advice: Liberals, progressive, and leftists -- who may be tempted to denounce him as a demagogue and move on -- should take all this seriously and try to understand what he’s doing. Here’s my best attempt to understand it.

Religion

There’s nothing new about mixing Christianity and right-wing politics in the United States, and Beck put forward a familiar framework: America is a Christian nation that honors religious freedom. Christians lead the way in the United States, but the way is open to all who believe in God. Anyone teaching the “lasting principles” found in all faiths is welcome, despite theological differences. “What they do agree on is God is the answer,” Beck said in his call for a central role for religious institutions, whether they be churches, synagogues, or mosques.

But for all the religious rhetoric, Beck never talked about the hot-button issues that are important to conservative Christians. No mention of abortion or gays and lesbians. Theologically based arguments against evolution and global warming were not on the table. No one bashed Islam as a devilish faith.

Instead, Beck concentrated on basics on which he could easily get consensus. God has given us the pieces -- faith, hope, and charity -- and all we have to do is put them together. Rather than arrogantly assert that God is on our side, he said, we have to be on God’s side.

Beck may eventually have to voice clear opposition to abortion and gay marriage to hold on to conservative Christian supporters, but on Saturday it was his apparent religious sincerity that mattered. I have no way to know how serious Beck’s faith in a traditional conception of God really is, but it doesn’t matter. He sounds sincere and moves sincere; he creates a feeling of sincerity. He brings an emotional candor to public discussion of religion that is unusual for someone in his line of work. When religious people believe that someone’s profession of faith is real -- that it’s rooted in a basic decency and deeply felt -- then differences over doctrine become less crucial.

There has been some discussion of whether Beck, a convert to Mormonism, can really connect to Protestants and Catholics, some of whom view the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints as a cult rather than an authentic Christian denomination. No doubt some evangelical/fundamentalist Christians will reject Beck, but his personal appeal could overcome those objections for many others.

Race

There’s also nothing new in Beck’s analysis of race. Like most conservatives, he argues that America’s racism is mostly a thing of the past, and that racial justice means a level playing field that offers equal opportunity but does not guarantee equal outcomes. Rather than come to terms with the way white supremacy continues to affect those outcomes through institutionalized racism and unconscious prejudices, folks like Beck prefer a simple story about the end of racism and personal transcendence.

What was different about Beck’s version of this story was the supporting cast. There were a lot of non-white people on the stage, including a significant number of African Americans. The rally went well beyond the tokenism that we are used to seeing, not only in the Republican Party but also in institutions throughout society. Beck not only gave a featured speaking slot to Alveda King -- one of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nieces, no doubt selected to bolster his claim to be speaking in the MLK tradition -- but also paid close attention to race throughout the day. Take a look at the lineup for the presenters of the three civilian badges of merit for faith, hope, and charity: An American Indian presenting to an African-American; a white man presenting to a Dominican; and a Mexican-American presenting to a white man, with a black woman accepting on his behalf.

Is it all cynical and symbolic? For those of us who are white, do we have a right to ask that question in the presence of so much passion from the people of color on stage? These weren’t cardboard cutouts shoved in front of a camera to add color, but an eclectic mix of people, all espousing a fundamental faith that they seemed to share with Beck.

Whether a movement rooted in Beck’s approach can gain wide acceptance in non-white communities is not the only question. For white people who are struggling with how to live (or, at least, appear to live) a commitment to racial justice, this kind of space will be attractive. Tea Party gatherings are weighed down by an overt racial ideology that limits their appeal; Beck may have a strategy that overcomes that problem, creating a movement that has a significant enough non-white component to make white people feel good about themselves without really challenging white dominance.

Redemption

The key message of the “Restoring Honor” rally was redemption, personal and collective, the personal intertwined with the collective. Unlike some reactionary right-wingers, Beck spoke often about America’s mistakes -- though all of them are safely in the past. Rather than try to downplay slavery, he highlighted it. It is one of America’s “scars,” a term he repeated over and over, to emphasize that our moral and political failures are from history, not of this moment.

“America has been both terribly good and terribly bad,” leaving us with a choice, he said. “We either let those scars crush us or redeem us.” Just as all individuals sin, so do all nations. Just as in our personal life we seek redemption, so do we as a nation. Framed that way, who would not want to choose that path?

But while on one level America has sinned, on another level it is beyond reproach. “It’s not just a country, it’s an idea, that man can rule himself,” Beck said. An idea remains pure, which means we don’t have to wonder whether there’s something about our political and economic systems that leads to failures; injustice must be the product of individual’s mistakes, not flaws in the systems in which they operate.

This is all standard conservative ideology as well. The United States is not just a nation struggling to be more democratic, but is instead the essence of democracy. Our wars are, by definition, wars of liberation. The wealth-concentrating capitalist system is not an impediment to freedom but is instead the essence of freedom. How any of this jibes with the egalitarian and anti-imperial spirit of the Gospels is off the table, because the United States is a Christian country and the idea of the United States is beyond reproach.

But, again, the key to Beck’s success is not just the ideology but the way he puts it all together. A nation whose wealth rests on genocide, slavery, and ongoing domination of the Third World is the nation that defines faith, hope, and charity? Beck proves it by connecting Moses to George Washington to Abraham Lincoln to Martin Luther King, Jr. All are part of the same tradition, the same striving for freedom.

Beck is the perfect person to sing this redemption song. He talks openly of the alcohol and drug abuse that ruled his life until he discovered his faith in God. Unlike George W. Bush, Beck tells the story with conviction. Perhaps both Bush and Beck tell the truth about their experience, but Beck makes you feel it is the truth in a way Bush could never pull off.

Reactions

Wait a minute, you say, none of this makes a lick of sense. Beck tosses a confused and confusing word salad that rewrites history and ignores reality. Maybe it sounds good, if you throw in enough energetic music and inspirational personal stories from veterans, ministers, philanthropists, and skillful TV personalities. But it’s really nothing but old right-wing ideology, no matter how slick the presentation.

What would Beck’s supporters say? Probably something like this:

So, you are one of those who wants to keep picking at the scars. Why do you lack faith, reject hope, refuse to offer charity? Why do you turn away from the values and principles that made us great? Glenn said it: “We must advance or perish. I choose, advance.” Glenn wants to help us advance, and you want us to perish.

I agree that Beck is wrong about almost everything. I agree that given his record of demagoguery and deception, he is unfit for work in the news media or political leadership. I agree that he may be one of those people incapable of sincerity, someone whose “real” personality is indistinguishable from his stage persona. I agree that he’s a scary guy.

I agree with all that, which is why I don’t really like Glenn Beck. If I ever got close to Beck I would probably like him even less. But after watching his performance on a screen over those three hours, I understand why it’s so easy to like him, at least on a screen. His convoluted mix of arrogance and humility is likeable, so long as one doesn’t look too closely at the details.

More than ever, people in the United States don’t want to look at details, because the details are bleak. Beck is on the national stage at a time when we face real collapse. One need not be a Revelation-quoting end-timer to recognize that we are a nation on the way down, living on a planet that is no longer able to supply the endless bounty of our dreams. That’s a difficult reality to face, one that many clamor to deny.

The danger of Beck is not just his appeal to fellow conservatives, but rather his appeal to anyone who wants to deny reality. My fear is not that he will galvanize a conservative base and make a bid for leadership of that part of the political spectrum, but that his message will resonate with moderates, maybe even some liberals, who despair over the future.

Does worrying about Beck’s appeal beyond the far right seem far fetched? The most important rhetorical move Beck made on Saturday was to claim the rally “has nothing to do with politics.” Many people across the ideological spectrum want desperately to escape from contemporary politics, which seems to be a source of endless frustration and heartbreak.

To those people, Glenn Beck’s redemption song will be seductive.

Jensen can be reached at rjensen@uts.cc.utexas.edu and his articles can be found online at http://uts.cc.utexas.edu/~rjensen/index.html. To join an email list to receive articles by Jensen, go to http://www.thirdcoastactivist.org/jensenupdates-info.html.

Snicker, Snicker! Re: Restoring Honor

2010-09-03T21:27:00.002-04:00

H/t Tim Wise, again.

Who Can't Love This?

2010-09-03T19:36:00.000-04:00

Awwwwwoooooooooooooooo!!! Where's Hillsong when you need'em?! LOL!

Mom’s Hug Revives Baby that Was Pronounced Dead

Premature infant stirs to life after two hours of ‘kangaroo care’

By Michael Inbar
TODAYshow.com contributor

Modern medicine often works wonders, but an Australian mom now knows firsthand the true miracle that can come from a mother’s touch.

Kate Ogg was told her newborn son Jamie had died after efforts to resuscitate the premature infant had failed shortly after his birth. But when Kate was given the chance to say goodbye to the apparently lifeless baby, she and her husband, David, found they were instead saying hello to the newest member of their family.

Now 5 months old and healthy, baby Jamie and his twin sister, Emily, appeared on TODAY Friday with their proud parents, who told the amazing tale of what happened to them in a Sydney, Australia, hospital last March.

Read the rest of the story here.

Let's Not Forget All the Confederate Memorials

2010-09-03T09:15:00.001-04:00

Sorry. Not to big on the Confederate soldier statue at the old county courthouse, now museum. Yankees all the way!

h/t Tim Wise

Monuments and Mosques: The debate over what’s sacred (an American Indian's perspective)

So the controversy – for the moment – is over the mosque slated to be built near the site of the World Trade Center bombings in New York City. Don’t you worry, though. We’ll get back to that ugly immigration debate momentarily.

None the less, I feel compelled to share some not-widely-known wisdom with my mosque-naysayers, for if there’s one thing citizens in this country get instantly aroused by it is some good old American Indian wisdom, so here you go, folks:

Since time immemorial, the Black Hills in South Dakota have been a holy place for the Lakota Sioux – my people. And to the Lakota the Black Hills is where Life began. Although the story of creation significantly differs between Sioux and Christians (our messenger from The Creator came in the form of a woman) Paha Sapa is not unlike Christianity’s Eden in its significance.

But here is where today’s debate over the mosque and my peoples’ sacred site come together: It didn’t matter to the Christians, those innumerable settlers who came west seeking gold, land, riches and religious freedom (ironically) that the Black Hills was our holy site, our sacred location, our Jerusalem. No. What mattered was that their monument – Mount Rushmore – be chiseled into it.

And the key word here is “on,” not “near.” The American Muslim community wants to build their 13-story mosque near the World Trade Center bombing site, not on it. Only if we – American Indians – were lucky enough to have seen Christians build their much coveted religious institutions and monuments to their leaders near our holy sites, and not on them.

And for some odd reason, the desecration of the Black Hills continues in the form of the Crazy Horse monument, still in construction. Although it is said that Lakota councils support the depiction of the never-photographed war leader on its rock face, I remain of the opinion that Crazy Horse would want his likeness carved into the Black Hills as much as a priest would like someone disfiguring his cathedral.

Sadly, and much to my chagrin, there seems to be no stopping in sight for the desecration of American Indian sacred locations. Take DIA in Colorado for example.

Denver International Airport, built in 1995 and residing only 20 minutes east of downtown, is on sacred Indian burial ground, and it now appears the city is considering a $1 billion facelift of the airport including the construction of more facilities.

Albeit, if the voices of protest aren’t speaking loudly enough, the spirits most certainly are.

Pass through any one of the concourses at DIA – especially Terminal A – and one will detect the subtle, familiar sounds of American Indian flute. The high harmonies play on a continual loop, serenading frequent fliers from out camouflaged speakers behind glass cases displaying old Indian trinkets and blouses.

These flute tunes aren’t there to pay homage to the plains Indians that once inhabited the area. Nor do they play to create a “Welcome to the West” ambiance for airport patrons on layover to Seattle. No. The Indian flute plays to pause the pranks and creepy occurrences that sweep the facility.

During construction, innumerable unexplained phenomenon occurred at DIA, and reportedly continues today 15 years after its unveiling. In the late 1990s, airport big shots summoned Colorado American Indian elders to place blessings on the airport in a last ditch effort to rest the restless spirits and mitigate the often frightening, reoccurring events airport staff were reporting on a consistent basis.

In 2000, paranormal researcher Dennis William Hauck placed Denver International Airport on his list of spooky spots around the world in his book “The International Directory of Haunted Places.” Whether you believe in the paranormal or not, the principle matter still looms: A building was constructed on a sacred site.

Christians obviously feel they have the constitutional right to build what they want, where they want, when they want. I find it most hypocritical that the same Christians who are for building edifices on sacred Indian sites are the very same voices of opposition regarding the erection of a Muslim mosque near Ground Zero.

So I present the obvious: Why not build a mosque near the hallowed grounds of the WTC? American Indian holy sites are desecrated by Christians all the time.

I am one of the last few true natives in this country, and I don’t expect many - or any outside of Indian Country for that matter - to subscribe to or even comprehend this rare perspective. But for the sake of doing away with double standards, I think this unfortunate reality for Indian peoples was worth pointing out today.

OK. Now back to the immigration debate.

Still Not A Mascot,

-Simon Moya-Smith

Set at Liberty Those Who Are Oppressed

2010-09-01T05:09:00.000-04:00

“ The Spirit of the LORD is upon Me,
       Because He has anointed Me
      To preach the gospel to the poor;
      He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
      To proclaim liberty to the captives
      And recovery of sight to the blind,
      To set at liberty those who are oppressed;
       To proclaim the acceptable year of the LORD.”
Then He closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant and sat down. And the eyes of all who were in the synagogue were fixed on Him. (Luke 4:18-20, New King James Version)

There's been a lot of smack talk about Black Liberation Theology. And I thought I'd help set the record straight. Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite shares this pithy little number over at WashPo:

There was a lavish buffet, and a senior professor in theology, carrying a plate piled high with food from the buffet, came over to where Gutierrez and I were chatting, and he loomed over Gutierrez. "So," this senior professor intoned, "Professor Gutierrez, explain liberation theology to me." Gutierrez looked at him. "It's a matter of the stomach," Gutierrez replied. "The stomach?" the large and portly senior professor said, astonished. "Yes," said Gutierrez, looking at the professor's loaded plate. "You do theology differently when your stomach is full than when it is empty."

What?! Yes! Too true, too true!

Now, I got my "inspiration" to use Luke 4:18-20 from reading this essay by Robert Parham. Parham says that one reason that, as Glenn Beck put it, "people aren't recognizing [Pres. Obama's] version of Christianity" is that:

Luke 4:18-19 is one of the most ignored, watered down, spiritualized or glossed-over texts in white Baptist pulpits, evading or emptying Jesus' first statement of his moral agenda.

His words, not mine. But I agree. I don't wanna disparage any particular race or ethnic group of people. If the tables of history were turned, we'd probably be discussing White Liberation Theology. (I'd still probably be on the side of Liberation Theology - not because I'm so spiritual, but more because I'm such a contrarian.)

The point is - Blessed are they who hunger for they shall be filled means something very material and real when you really are hungry. Or poor. Or thirsty. Or persecuted.

Hey, look. Let's not make this partisan, right? God is far too big and too high, too deep and too wide to fit neatly into our American politics, right? Just read the Word. Read the Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes and the chapters immediately following. Jesus didn't just say all this nice stuff then offer Himself for Crucifixion. He didn't just preach that's Sunday's sermon then go back home to began preparing for the previous Sunday's. No! Rather than that, Matthew records him as healing a leper as soon as service was over! And several people after that. Later in the fourth chapter of his gospel, Luke describes Jesus as healing a whole bunch of people, including those who had been demon-possessed. To hear Mark tell it, Jesus couldn't get a moment to himself. People rushed to get to a town ahead of Jesus; and even though he had been looking for a place to rest, Jesus had compassion on the people. He healed them. He taught them. He fed them.

Now admittedly, I didn't know there were such a thing as "liberation" theology until I got to college. I knew my white friends and classmates didn't seem to believe quite what I believed; but, I didn't know there was a name for it. Understanding how Jesus relates to victims and the oppressed is my spiritual instinct. Rev. Wright scared a lot of white folks and shamed a few house Negros; but that was just about the gist of every sermon I heard growing up. (Without the "damn" part.) Not even "second" nature, for me is nature. I don't read the Scripture and think to myself, "How can I make the Gospel relevant to black people," as though I would emphasize some parts over others. It's not like some parts of the Bible are for the disadvantaged and oppressed, while other parts are for the well off. No.

For me, there is no such thing as "liberation" theology because the Gospel itself is liberating. If the only person who's liberated by your "version of Christianity" is you, then I'm not too sure about that. James made clear that to suggest to someone who's naked and hungry that they should buck up and "be clothed in Christ and filled with the Spirit" is useless and nonsense (James 2:14-17). I'll add that it's a little mean and evil, even.

And before you walk off and accuse me and all of Black Christendom of heresy, let me remind you that with all that's written in the Bible, much of it involves God's relationship with slaves or a people in exile, not unlike black folks, or a woman who's lost both sons and her husband and only has a daughter-in-law to lean on. Or even a king who's facing a coup led by his son. And if you don't or won't read the Word from that perspective - then you're missing a huge, gargantuan chunk for the point.

Think about it, it's hard to hear the Gospel on an empty stomach.

Or, sometimes, even a full one.

Problems with the Acronym, MLK: "Misinformed, Libelous, Know-Nothing"

2010-08-29T20:13:00.000-04:00

No, this isn't about anything Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did or did not do in his lifetime. He's not the historical giant I most related to, but that's mostly because I'm more of an Ella Barker fan. Suffice it to say, though, I do admire him, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

That's his name, right? So then, who, or what, is MLK?

MLK is more than a shorthand. MLK is a mythical figure, like Santa Clause or the Easter Bunny, who asked only that one day, the world might judge his children, and everybody, not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. (Ironic, then, that people of my hue and darker are maligned for voting so consistantly Democratic. Hmm . . . But I digress.) MLK is storybook character, like Peter Cottontai or Curius George, who led marches only to fight for integration. MLK has become an acronym for anything white Americans, and their enablers of color, including but not limited to his niece, want to believe about him, like "Military, Low Taxes, and Kind." Or, "free Market, Liberty, Kegs."

But we know that wasn't the totality of who Dr. King was or what he stood for. That's one problem

Here's the other: apparently, MLK orchestrated the Movement from beginning to end, prior to his involvement and after his death. But the truth is Dr. King wasn't the only leader, muchless participant, in the Civil Rights Movement. You can't just dismiss ideas you disagree with by crying, "King would've never blah, blah, blah!" If Ralph Abernathy or John Lewis or Ella Baker or Fannie Lou Hamer or Baynard Rustin promoted reparations or gay marriage or reproductive rights or government intervention to protect the rights of an oppressed group, then you should disabuse yourself of any notion that you're the right inheritor of the Civil Rights Movement.

What Really Matters

2010-08-28T11:15:00.096-04:00

In honor of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I decided to post on issues the Movement would be concerned about:

Poverty in the United States

Over 37 million people in the United States lived in poverty in 2007

The number of people living in poverty has increased by almost 6 million since 2000. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
Over 15.5 million people lived below half of the poverty line in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
37 percent of households headed by women with children present lived in poverty in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
In 2007, the poverty threshold for a family of four was $21,203. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008

Children in the United States have the highest poverty rate of all age groups

Over 13 million children (age 18 and younger) lived in poverty in 2007. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
The poverty rate for children was 18 percent in 2007—much higher than the poverty rates for adults 18-64 (10.9 percent) and for the elderly (9.7 percent). U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
A family of four generally needs to earn twice the poverty threshold to provide children with basic necessities. National Center for Children in Poverty, 2008

Employment alone is not always sufficient to provide a family’s basic needs

55 percent of children in low-income families have at least one parent who works full-time, year-round. National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP), 2008
36 percent of households receiving emergency food assistance had at least one employed adult. Feeding America, 2007 (Formerly America’s Second Harvest)
In 2005, 25 percent of all workers earned a poverty level hourly wage.Economic Policy Institute, 2008

Minorities and immigrants are disproportionately affected by poverty

24.5 percent of black and 21.5 percent of Hispanic people live in poverty, compared to 8.2 percent of white people. 34.5 percent of black and 28.6 percent of Hispanic children live in poverty, compared to 15 percent of white children. U.S. Census Bureau, 2008
16.5 percent of foreign born US residents experience poverty versus 11.9 percent of native born residents. This number is particularly high among immigrants who have not naturalized, at 21.3 percent.U.S. Census Bureau, 2008

This is despite abundance of food resources. Almost 100 billion pounds of food is wasted in America each year. 700 million hungry human beings in different parts of the world would have gladly accepted this food. Here are some statistics on the nature of poverty and the waste of food and money in America:

In 2004, requests for emergency food assistance increased by an average of 14 percent during the year, according to a 27-city study by the United States Conference of Mayors.
Also in this study, it was noted that on average, 20 percent of requests for emergency food assistance have gone unmet in 2004.
According to the Bread for the World Institute 3.5 percent of U.S. households experience hunger. Some people in these households frequently skip meals or eat too little, sometimes going without food for a whole day. 9.6 million people, including 3 million children, live in these homes.

According to a report by the Institute on Assets and Social Policy at Brandeis University, the wealth gap between African-American families and white families has jumped dramatically in 23 years. In fact, the difference in financial assets between these two groups has increased over four times in a generation, from $20,000 in 1984 to $95,000 in 2007.

The unemployment rate for whites held steady at 8.8 percent compared to February and went down for Asians from 8.4 percent to 7.5 percent. But it rose to 16.5 percent for blacks from 15.8 percent. Hispanics showed a slight increase as well from 12.4 percent to 12.6 percent.

College-educated black men, especially, have struggled relative to their white counterparts in this downturn, according to figures from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The unemployment rate for black male college graduates 25 and older in 2009 has been nearly twice that of white male college graduates — 8.4 percent compared with 4.4 percent.

. . .A study published several years ago in The American Economic Review titled “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?” found that applicants with black-sounding names received 50 percent fewer callbacks than those with white-sounding names.

A more recent study, published this year in The Journal of Labor Economics found white, Asian and Hispanic managers tended to hire more whites and fewer blacks than black managers did.

In the largest and most comprehensive project of its kind to date,

13 young male applicants, presenting the same qualifications and experience, split into teams and went on nearly 3,500 entry-level job interviews with private companies in supposedly left-leaning, "progressive", multicultural New York City, jobs ranging from restaurants to manufacturing to financial services. After recording which applicants were invited back for interviews or were offered jobs, two sociology professors looked at the hiring practices of 1,500 prospective private employers, focusing specifically on discrimination against young male minorities and ex-offenders.

Some of the study's findings are depressingly familiar. For instance, young white high school graduates were twice as likely to receive positive responses from New York employers as equally qualified black job seekers. It also reaffirmed not only that former prisoners are at a distinct disadvantage in the job market, but also that, again, black ex-prisoners are in a much worse position: positive responses from employers towards white applicants with a criminal record dipped 35 percent, while for black applicants similarly situated it plummeted 57 percent.
However, the study revealed that our society's racism extends even deeper: black applicants with no criminal record were no more likely to get a job than white applicants with criminal records just released from prison! In other words, while whites with criminal records received low rates of positive responses, such response rates were equally low for blacks without a criminal background. Further exposing the overt racism at play was the study's finding that minority employers were more accepting of minority applicants and job applicants with prison records.

Lastly, in honor of the march on Washington for jobs and freedom, a few MLK quotes:

Reporter: "Do you feel it's fair to request a multi-billion dollar program of preferential treatment for the Negro, or any other minority?"

Dr. King: "I do indeed...Within common law, we have ample precedents for special compensatory programs. ... America adopted a policy of special treatment for her millions of veterans...They could negotiate loans from banks to launch businesses. They could receive special points to place them ahead in competition for civil service jobs...There was no appreciable resentment of the preferential treatment being given to the special group." -- (Interview,1965, p.367)
___________________________________
"Something positive must be done... In 1863 the Negro was told that he was free as a result of the Emancipation Proclamation. But he was not given any land to make that freedom meaningful. And the irony of it all is that at the same time the nation failed to do anything for the black man -- through an act of Congress it was giving away millions of acres of land in the West and Midwest -- which meant that it was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor...Not only that, it provided agents to further their expertise in farming. Not only that, as the years unfolded it provided low interest rates so that they could mechanize their farms. And to this day thousands of these very persons are receiving millions of dollars in federal subsidies every year not to farm.

"And these are so often the very people who tell Negroes that they must lift themselves by their own bootstraps...

"We must come to see that the roots of racism are very deep in our country, and there must be something positive and massive in order to get rid of all the effects of racism and the tragedies of racial injustice." -- "Remaining Awake," 1968 (271).
______________________________
"Whenever the issue of compensatory treatment for the Negro is raised, some of our friends recoil in horror. The Negro should be granted equality, they agree, but he should ask nothing more. On the surface, this appears reasonable, but it is not realistic." -- 1964, Why We Can't Wait.
______________________________
A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. (Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community?) 1967 [emphasis mine]
___________________________
"A society that has done something special against the Negro for hundreds of years must now do something special for the Negro..."

For Ethanol, Now This?!

2010-08-27T00:03:00.001-04:00

And I'm talking sugarcane not corn. For Brazil to lead the world in sugarcane ethanol production, much better for the environment than either corn ethanol or oil and gasoline, is one thing. They have sugarcane, we don't. They apparently don't have a strong oil and gasoline industry, we do. Even the little sugarcane industry we do have is blocking.

But for them to beat us out in terms of ensuring equality for all citizens regardless of race, that's just inexcusable.

For us. Kudos to them. This year will be Brazil's first census recognizing descendents of Kalunga quilombo, descendents of one of Brazil's very large communities founding during the 16th century by runaway slaves. Yes, they have Constitutional protections such as ownership of their ancestral lands. But it's hard to take advantage of protections and rights if the government doesn't know, or doesn't recognize, you exist.

Now look. I'm not saying they don't have severe and standing disparities and inequalities they need to work out. I'm not saying they don't have conservatives who'll water down potentially very, very good law. I'm not saying they have us beat in any measure of racial equality. African Americans have achieved a great deal in the short time that at least most legal barriers to black progress. What I am saying is that they clearly understand centuries of racism, legal and otherwise, won't be undone without government intervention - the same intervention and effort it took to create a society based on racism and inequality. That's huge and something it seems white Americans refuse to understand.

But anyway,

So big ups to Brazil. Wish you were here. Helping to improve our laws, too.

When Reporting Goes Wrong

2010-08-25T16:08:00.004-04:00

Okay. For the record, I wasn't at the City Grill shootings or the Roxy's Bar attacks. But I do agree that residents of Buffalo, NY protesting the characterization of the City Grill shootings as gang violence have a point. You wanna make the point that a certain lifestyle involves risks? Okay, I guess. But do you really have to list the criminal records of shooting victims to make that point? Mmm . . . . probably, not. Especially when it seems your conclusions may be wrong. Especially since no one, least of all me, is suggesting that being gay may be a bad idea because you could die violently. And no one is suggesting that being gay may cause people to become violent, not even the defendant who's saying she was the victim of assault.

Nevertheless, I agree that something needs to be done to address violence in inner-city densely populated enclaves of high concentrations of poverty, and the media can help. First off, since crime is down and you're giving a false impression of reality and a false and negative impression black people,
you can stop talking about violence so much. Admitting a problem isn't the first step to a solution; admitting the truth about that problem is. And the truth here is that gang violence is a symptom of a larger, national dysfunction, not the problem in and of itself. If you must talk about gangs, then tell the truth, and for the love of all that's good and holy, stop glamorizing and romanticizing gang-life. At present, mainstream media is not better than, say for example, gangsta rap. The media, all media, tells children who they are and who they aren't.

And since we're on the subject, I have a few more suggestions:

1. One reason young people join gangs is for the money. Granted, it's not a lot - otherwise, they could afford to leave their momma's house - but it's more than they'd make otherwise. And if they survive and rise in the ranks, they can really make some money.

So one thing we can do is get Van Jones back in the administration to lead the effort to bring green jobs into urban areas.

2. Start investing in educating children in inner-cities rather than imprisoning them! From early-childhood through college, and repeal the drug provision of the higher education act. Look:

"A 2004 report by the Harvard Civil Rights Project found that in the Midwest, 46% of black children attend schools in urban areas which are 90 to 100% black. Of these children, 88% are from poor families. The HCRP report found that nationwide, America's schools spend an average of $1500.00 less per black student than they do on white students. Poor black students attending under-funded schools face decrepit buildings, archaic classroom materials, under-qualified teachers, over-crowding, and simplistic curriculum which emphasizes rote memory over the development of critical thinking skills. The end result statistically? While 91.8% of white students graduate from high school, blacks graduate at a rate of 83.7%. Of those black males who do drop out of high school, over half do prison time."

"Evaluating the return on investment, the High/Scope Perry researchers conclude that, 40 years after the preschool experience, the public gained $12.90 for every dollar spent on the program. Much of the savings came from dollars not spent on incarceration; there were also savings to the public in lower special education costs; taxes paid to public coffers because of higher earnings, and savings in public assistance costs. As to the benefit to the participants: program participants earned 14 percent more per person than they would have otherwise—$156,490 more over their lifetimes. The cost of the two-year program itself was $15,166 per child.18"

3 - Yes, this means ending the "war on drugs," or more appropriately, the war on people of color:

"Although White youth sell and use drugs at the same or higher rates as youth of color,(1) Black and Latino youth are arrested, prosecuted and imprisoned at dramatically higher rates for drug crimes. In 1980, 14.5% of all juvenile drug arrests were Black youth; by 1990, Black youth constituted 48.8% of juvenile drug arrests.(2) A Black youth with a drug case is more than twice as likely to be held in police custody for a drug offense than a White youth.(3) While half of all drug arrests involving White youth result in formal processing, 75% of drug arrests involving Black youth are prosecuted.(4) Among young people incarcerated in juvenile facilities for the first time on a drug charge, the rate of commitment among Black youth is 48 times that of Whites, while the rate for Latino youth is 13 times that of Whites.(5) Black youth are three times more likely than White youth to be admitted to an adult prison for a drug conviction.(6) While the rate of young Whites being sent to prison for drug offenses from 1986-1996 doubled, the comparable Black rate increased six-fold.(7)"

In 1971, the US prison population was 200,000. Today it is 2.1 million. Half of the US prison population is black. While having only 5% of the world's overall population, the United States now harbors 25% of the incarcerated population of the world. 13% of prisoners worldwide are black Americans. 30% of black American men experience incarceration during their lifetime.

This also includes legalizing marijuana. Let's face it. Who's benefiting the most from criminalizing marijuana if not criminals? Right, gun-rights advocates? This "war" isn't even working - unless you believe, as I'm starting to wonder, that it's whole intent was to stifle dissent coming from people of color. After all, [t]he Civil Rights Movement represented a serious threat to the dominance of the wealthy, white patriarchy dominating the federal government. Naturally, they responded by imprisoning those challenging their stranglehold on power. In doing so, they employed the typical guile of the US government. The war on drugs.

Not only is it costing an obscene amount of money (as of 2002, $40 billion per year and climbing); not only are there racial disparities and injustices throughout the criminal justice system, including but not limited to the remaining disparity in mandatory sentencing for convictions for crack cocaine and the powder form of the illegal drug; but in addition, it has dismantled the black family by impressing black men "en masse" and disproportionately disenfranchised black would-be voters."

Not to mention Ronald Reagan's plan

to attract poor and working class white voters who were resentful of, and threatened by, desegregation, busing, and affirmative action. In the words of H.R. Haldeman, President Richard Nixon’s White House Chief of Staff: “[T]he whole problem is really the blacks. The key is to devise a system that recognizes this while not appearing to.”

The Reagan's declaration of war at a time when drug crime was declining (as it is now), his administration's Iran-Contra affair, and the "sudden" appearance of cocaine in black neighborhoods.

So yeah. There's a lot we can do as a nation and that the media can do. But listing our the criminal records of people who've been killed is not one.