Tag: Race

I am an old fart so I remember the racial divide of the 50 & 60’s, not a good time to be an American.  I also remember how close the races were becoming in the 70’s, which was the closest the two had become in many years.  Then as quickly as it had began it started deteriorating in th Me generation of the 80’s.

Once again I see the races are close to a unity that has been missing and at the same time they are being pushed to segregate themselves along color lines.  The media is doing all possible to widen the expanse—politics of the Dems are also helping—and then there is the American people, they are also helping separate the electorate along racial and gender lines.  

it is just flipping SAD!  There is a chance for the American people to face the question head on and find common ground but they will not at this point.  White blue collars workers in the northeast are holding blacks responsible for their lack of work, when it is a non-caring government and administration that should be the bad guy.  

The Dems, some of them, want this new race battle with the attempt to marginalize a message of hope.  And thanks to their efforts the Dems are losing ground to the Repubs.  And there is a possiblity that this divide will help defeat the Dems in November–yet again.

The outcome is becoming predictable–They will snatch defeat from the jaws of victory–yet again.  Well done.  at least they are consistent.  

If Obama was a white man, he would not be in this position. And if he was a woman of any color, he would not be in this position. He happens to be very lucky to be who he is. And the country is caught up in the concept.

Geraldine Ferraro, Torrance Daily Breeze, March 7, 2008

It now appears that Geraldine Ferraro’s now-famous first sentence was at least partially right, albeit a week or so early.  If Obama were a white man, he would not be in the position he is today: not, as Ferraro would have it, a position in which he receives the uncritical positive regard of much of the population,  but one where he is being called to answer for the attitudes and actions of the entire Black community.  Her fourth sentence proved prophetic as well: the whole country has been caught up in the concept.

The question before us, and before the superdelegates, is whether the third sentence was also true: is he very lucky to be who he is?  Again, contrary to Ferraro, that does not mean lucky to be Black, but is he lucky enough — by virtue of both eloquent argument and personal example — to be able to defuse the effect of his being symbolically associated with those Blacks whom much of white America most hates and fears?

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Um, I’m sorry. There seems to be some kind of mistake.

When we talked about being open to having… what do you call them… “African-Americans” in leadership positions we were talking about the OTHER KIND.

The “ain’t no big thang” kind.

You know… happy black folk!

My nineteen year old son and I just finished listening to Obama’s speech from today. To say I was moved would be an understatement. I can’t recall being brought to tears by a political speech before today, though I’m not so sure you could really call this speech political at its core. What I heard from Barack today was a plea to humanity to pause for a moment, to reflect on the reality of the divided culture we have created, and to see through our anger, resentment and suspicions, that the ties that bind us together are stronger than those that would seek to tear us apart. If there were any lingering doubt about this mans authenticity, his incredible will or his warrior spirit, they were certainly laid to rest today.

Please join me below for my personal thoughts and my own families journey with racism.

It was a brilliant summer day in Atlanta, and the lumescent, blue sky lifted my already risen spirits as I was planning my wedding. A coworker and I were shopping for wedding dresses in an upscale suburb, both of us dressed in the standard uniform for such an event: sweats and sneakers. My coworker carried the look off with much more chic than I, with her tall frame, warm brown eyes and rich, espresso colored skin giving her the natural grace of a woman for whom sweats is a weekend indulgence.

Me? I just looked a little dumpy.

This news item is a few weeks old, so I apologize to those who have read it already, rolled their eyes, and punched a wall. It aptly illustrates that we haven’t quite arrived at the station aboard the post partisan express, and maybe, just maybe, talking about race and gender is instructive. It is also proof one can still turn the verbal double play all in one conversation and be racist and sexist at the same time. Certainly takes a special talent. The short article appears here.

A county judge in Hagerstown was reprimanded for calling three black female lawyers “the Supremes” in court and advising the defendant to get “an experienced male attorney.”

Washington County Circuit Judge W. Kennedy Boone has acknowledged that his comments suggested racial and sexual bias. In his written response to a complaint, Boone said he was trying to protect the three public defenders from representing a difficult defendant.

Oh, I get it, he was trying to help them, ah the burden of the white man must be excruciating. What is a guy to do when he is surrounded by those he is certain are beneath him? There is no chance that these lawyers went to school to learn their profession and could be competent. Maybe he was gravely concerned that they went to one of those girl law schools where they teach you to dress cute and make a darn good cup of coffee for the men and might be overwhelmed by the challenge of …. being a lawyer. Was he worried they went to the singing law school, you know the one that black women all go to. After all, if an experienced male attorney was assigned to the case he might be able to fix up one of these women with an appropriate husband. Isn’t that why women of any color go to law school? To find husbands? Besides, these women were taking honest work away from experienced male attorneys and somebody has to stand up for their rights.

I think we can all agree that race baiting, whatever its origin in each individual case, is poisoning the well in the Democratic primary. It’s the issue that just won’t die; the one that needs a stake through its heart – ASAP, please.

Consider this quote from a TIME.com piece:

Obama’s impressive win meant all the more given the nature of politics in South Carolina, a state whose history is fraught with race and class. Some observers wondered if the state’s voters were becoming more racially polarized in the final days before the primary. That speculation was fueled by one late McClatchy/MSNBC survey that suggested Obama could expect to receive no more than 10% of the white vote, half of what the same poll had shown only a week before. But Obama instead won about a quarter of the white vote overall, and around half of young white voters, on his way to a commanding 55% of the total vote (Clinton finished second with roughly 27% and Edwards came in third with 18%). The excitement around Obama’s candidacy pushed turnout to record levels – a kind of surge, says Obama strategist Cornell Belcher, that “is something only Barack Obama is capable of bringing to the table.”

But that’s not the cute part.

The “cute part” was the title of the piece, which has been changed.

This link shows you a screenshot of the piece as originally titled.

In the current environment, you cannot tell me that that is an accident.

Well, you could tell me that….but I’d ask you what you were smoking.

Contact: [email protected]

‘Cuz I’m gonna.

Enough of this crap.

Race, religion and the intertwined aspects of freedom, justice and ethical prosecution of due process within a democratic framework seem to always evoke a variety of reactions among people — sometimes violent, sometimes vehement, and sometimes quite touching and sublime.

In addition to the regular interactive dance of race, religion and ethics that we see in everyday life and through our media filtes, we also have a new horizon to explore — the one afforded to us through the use of “new media” such as the blogosphere.

Two examples worthy of your attention and your help with dissemination are now posted over on ePluribus Media. Make the jump for more details.

Unlike Time, which blocked all responses to Joe Klein’s factually challenged column on FISA, via Matt Yglesias, Slate has published a response by Stephen Metclaf to Will Saletan on race and IQ. The nuts:

Much of Saletan’s précis of the rest of the research surveyed in “Thirty Years of Research Into Race Differences on Cognitive Abilities” is highly questionable. His takeaway regarding the “admixture” studies is precisely the opposite of what an American Psychological Association task force concluded the studies show-that more “European” blood in a black American does not make him smarter. Saletan points up the problems with a favorite study of the environmentalists, into the IQ outcomes of children fathered by foreign soldiers and raised by (white) German mothers. This study showed that kids with African fathers scored the same as those with white fathers. But, Saletan says, it suffers from a fatal flaw: Blacks in the military had been screened for IQ. Saletan concludes, “Even environmentalists (scholars who advocate nongenetic explanations) concede that this filter radically distorted the numbers.” But this is flatly untrue. The two most prominent environmentalists, Richard Nisbett and James Flynn, have dismissed this very objection. Both have pointed out that white soldiers were also screened, and so had higher IQs than the general white population. James Flynn has argued extensively that the black-white gap in the military was the same as in the population at large.

In essence, Metcalf demonstrates that Saletan, like Joe Klein on FISA, simply did not know what he was writing about. It is to Slate’s credit that it was willing to publish such a demolition of one of its regular writers. Score another one for honesty for Washington Post Company, which allowed Krauthammer to be demolished today.

No, those are not my words. This is not one of those essays where I declare my vast and eternal disenchantment with Blogtopia, the net roots, America, western civilization, the Democratic party, or french fries that aren’t crispy. When I need a break, I will take one. Until then, I need to engage in the tremulous task of saving my brain from impending calcification and trying to look for sources of inspiration.

No, those words were spoken by Fannie Lou Hamer, a brilliant, compassionate, and straight talking Black woman from Mississippi who was a grass roots civil rights activist and anti-poverty worker. She was born poor and she died that way. Americans all seem to want their political/historical struggles to have a happy ending, a conclusive convergence of harmony, perhaps so they can hang on to their myths.

A few other things Mrs.Hamer said:

Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.

There is one thing you have got to learn about our movement. Three people are better than no people.

With the people, for the people, by the people. I crack up when I hear it: I say with the handful, for the handful, by the handful, cause that’s what really happens.

If the white man gives you anything-just remember when he gets ready he will take it back. We have to take it for ourselves.

Here is a selection of biographical material about her if anybody is still intrigued after my inevitably inadequate introduction to her. Fascinating people just cannot be presented fairly in an essay.

Naturally there is no irony in the fact that Fannie Lou Hamer’s name was specifically attached along with Rosa Parks and Coretta Scott King to the Voting Rights Reauthorization Bill thus recognized and canonized but was so poor right before she died that she could not afford a post mastectomy prosthesis that she had to stuff socks in her clothing. When she died she and her husband had no money friends had to raise money for the funeral. She chose to stay in Mississippi and continue as an anti-poverty crusader rather capitalize financially through being recognized. It seems we love agitators most when they are gone and we merely tolerate them or seek to mold them when they are with us. We wish to harness the raw power of those who step beyond the the accepted battle lines in order to push our won agenda and then they are often discarded. Many Black women played crucial roles in the civil rights movement. Lynne Olson, an author who looks at the significant role women played in that era notes that Rosa Parks was often depicted as being very deferential when she was actually a careful planner who had put much thought and effort into her actions. And further once the Montgomery bus boycott was initiated, and Martin Luther King was involved, Parks was not allowed to speak at the first mass meeting.She asked to speak, and one of the ministers there said he thought she had done enough. It was time for the men to drive the movement apparently.