This is a great episode of the Bill Moyers Show from April 2010. So, what would Martin Luther King think about our society more than 40 years after his death? We must remember why Martin Luther King was in Memphis. He was starting the Poor People’s Campaign. It is time for us to pick up where King left off. We need a Poor People’s Campaign.

Gene Marks, contributor to Forbes magazine, decided that he needed to write advice for the black community. Now, he doesn’t want to give advice to all of the black community, just to “poor black kids.” I find it relatively amusing that a business and technology writer would want to write about sociology in Forbes magazine. You would figire that Gene Marks had grown up in a poor black neighborhood and “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” in order to hand out advice to “poor black kids.” Nope. The fact that Mister Marks is completely unqualified to give any advice doesn’t seem to stop him at all.

Now I’m reminded of that scene in the classic movie The Graduate. You remember when Dustin Hoffman… Instead of me explaining what happens just watch the clip –

Basically Gene Marks yammers on about hard work and a little bit of luck and then he hits on it… technology. Young inner-city black kids need to use technology in order to get ahead (like plastics, it is some sort of magic potion). He then goes into a nauseating list of websites that have tons of information available. All a young black child has to do is get a computer and the Internet and he or she can be successful. It is that simple. The fact that this is one of the most condescending pieces of drivel that has ever been written on the Internet doesn’t seem to faze Mr. Marks.

A recent study details one of the major flaws in Gene Marks’s logic. 33% of households making less than $25,000 a year don’t have Internet access. 27% of black families and 17% of white families do not have any Internet access. It is hard for me understand how families who are struggling to put food on the table and keep the lights on are going to be able to afford a computer and broadband Internet access. Do all these families just lack the type of moxie that Gene Marks is talking about? Or to they lack the MONEY necessary to do these things?

If the problem (of poverty) were easy to solve, it would’ve been solved hundreds of years ago. Simply giving a child a computer with high-speed Internet access is only a fraction of the solution to the problem. First of all, who is going to maintain the computer? Who’s going to add the antivirus software? When the computer freezes up, who’s going to fix it? When the antivirus software is not updated and the latest mega-virus melts the hard drive, what then? Who is going to teach the children how to use the computers? Sure, computers are much easier to use today than they were 10 or 15 years ago, but they still require some instruction. Now, don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I don’t think that children can get ahead with computers. Today’s computers, along with Internet access, can open up a world of knowledge. But to assume that all that needs to be done to end poverty in the black community is to give people some Internet access and a few computers is craziness.

There are several thoughtful responses to this absolutely clueless treatise. They can be found here and here.

(I’m sorry, but I just can’t help myself. I must continue. First of all, if you want to fix poverty, how about making these ghettos safe? Secondly, how about jobs where people can make a living wage? Thirdly, how about schools with adequate facilities that would include computers and Internet access? These are just a few of my suggestions to improve inner-city conditions and therefore help these “little black kids.” Oh, if you (Mr. Marks) really have something to add to this conversation, how about writing in a magazine that is read by normal folks and not in Forbes!?)

When pressed by Gloria Berger, Ron Paul stated, “I’ve never read that stuff. I’ve never read – I came – I was probably aware of it 10 years after it was written and it’s been going on 20 years that people have pestered me about this and CNN does it every single time.”

Here’s the problem as I see it in 2011. Ron Paul is all about personal responsibility. He needed to own this mistake. He needed to say that he didn’t read his own newsletter and that he should have told his readers that he didn’t write or read it. He needed to offer to refund the readers’ money, since the vast majority of his readers didn’t know that these weren’t his words or thoughts. But, no. He has not admitted, nor will he admit to his mistake. He continues to be plagued by this issue because he has yet to do the right thing.

I wrote the following back in 2008:

From the Ron Paul Newsletter

So, I got raked over the coals by a commenter for “not doing my homework” with regard to a post stating that Ron Paul’s newsletter included racist writings. First, the facts. There are things that have been written in the Ron Paul Newsletter that are clearly offensive. The newsletter stereotypes Blacks and homosexuals. Over the years, Ron Paul has had varying explanations about his newsletter. In 1996, the Houston Chronicle asked him about the newsletter. “Paul said allegations about his writings amounted to name-calling by the Democrats and that his opponents should focus instead on how to shrink government spending and reform welfare.” Please note that in that Houston Chronicle article Ron Paul never mentions that he didn’t write the article. He doesn’t mention that someone else wrote the article.

Now, fast forward to 2008. The same articles are being called into question. Ron Paul states flatly that he is for the individual, no matter what color. He states that he didn’t write the article and, here’s the best part, he doesn’t know who did. The editor of the New York Times has to take responsibility for everything that hundreds of writers contribute. Ron Paul, Dr. Personal Responsibility (one of the core beliefs of Libertarians), will not take responsibility for his own newsletter. As a matter of fact, he admits that he doesn’t even read the newsletter that bears his name. Come on, at least man up and take some responsibility for something that has your name plastered on its front! I would have more respect for the man if he said, “Look, Wolf, it was a long time ago. I was approached by what I thought were like-minded individuals to publish a newsletter. I really wasn’t a part of the operation but the newsletter had my name on it. I accept full responsibility. After these articles were published, it became clear to me that I had to part ways with the guy who actually published the newsletter in my name. I apologize to anyone who was hurt by this newsletter. This doesn’t reflect me or my values.” Is this answer a cop out? Sure, but it is better than the Schultz defense – “I know nothing.”

———–

From CNN.com:

A series of newsletters in the name of GOP presidential hopeful Ron Paul contain several racist remarks — including one that says order was restored to Los Angeles after the 1992 riots when blacks went “to pick up their welfare checks.”

CNN recently obtained the newsletters — written in the 1990s and one from the late 1980s — after a report was published about their existence in The New Republic. (more…)

Update: Well, it is interesting what a little time and Google can produce. It appears that in 1996 Ron Paul was asked about the newsletters. He did not deny he wrote them back then. He embraced the racist comments. He has only recently started denying that he wrote them. I find this interesting. This puts Paul in a new light for me. I thought that he had bad ideas but that he was at least an honest man. Now, it looks as if he is lying to make himself look like a legitimate politician. Either he wrote the articles and was honest back in 1996 when he defended the articles or he is lying now when he states that he didn’t write them and doesn’t support what they said. Which is it??

You can read more here and here.

Jill St. John as Tiffany Case in the James Bond movie – Diamonds Are Forever

• A new planet has been found in another galaxy. This planet is made entirely of crystallized carbon – it’s a diamond. How cool is that?

A friend of mine sent me a link to this article about a week ago. I was in the middle of a terrible week at work. I didn’t have time to post it. This is a great article from Charles Blow (for some reason I always want to call him Curtis instead of Charles). Check out this great article:

I had ducked into a movie theater to escape the maddening debt-limit debacle. I chose “Captain America: The First Avenger.” Surely that would reset the patriotic optimism.

But as I watched the scenes of a fictitious integrated American Army fighting in Europe at the end of World War II, I became unsettled. Yes, I know that racial revisionism has become so common in film that it’s almost customary, so much so that moviegoers rarely balk or even blink. And even I try not to think too deeply about shallow fare. Escapism by its nature must bend away from reality. But this time I was forced to bend it back. It was personal.

The only black fighting forces on the ground in Europe during World War II were segregated, including the 92nd Infantry Division: The now famous “Buffalo Soldiers.” My grandfather, Fred D. Rhodes, was one of those soldiers.

The division was activated late in the war, more out of acquiescence to black leaders than the desire of white policy makers in the war department who doubted the battle worthiness of black soldiers. It was considered to be an experiment, one that the writer of the department’s recommendation to re-establish it would later describe as “programmed to fail from the inception.”

For one, as the historian Daniel K. Gibran has documented, the soldiers were placed under the command of a known racist who questioned their “moral attitude toward battle,” “mental toughness” and “trustworthiness,” and who remained a military segregationist until the day he died. In 1959, the commander commented in a study: “It is absurd to contend that the characteristics demonstrated by the Negroes” will not “undermine and deteriorate the white army unit into which the Negro is integrated.”

Yet they did show great toughness and character, including my grandfather. This is how his 1944 Silver Star citation recounts his bravery:

“On 16 November, while proceeding towards the front at night, Sergeant Rhodes’s motorized patrol was advanced upon near a village by a lone enemy soldier. Sergeant Rhodes jumped from the truck and as a group of enemy soldiers suddenly appeared, intent upon capturing the truck and patrol intact, he opened fire from his exposed position on the road. His fire forced the enemy to scatter while the patrol dismounted and took cover with light casualties. Sergeant Rhodes then moved toward a nearby building where, still exposed, his fire on the enemy was responsible for the successful evacuation of the wounded patrol members by newly arrived medical personnel. Sergeant Rhodes was then hit by enemy shell fragments, but in spite of his wounds he exhausted his own supply of ammunition then, obtaining an enemy automatic weapon, exhausted its supply inflicting three certain casualties on the enemy. He spent the rest of the night in a nearby field and returned, unaided, to his unit the next afternoon.”

Awesome! (more…)

Some people refuse to understand the facts that are right in front of them. Marvel Comics seems to be getting some backlash over their “new Spiderman.” The new Spiderman is a young man who is of Black-Latino descent. Some have decided that this backlash is because we still have a racial problem here in the United States. If you remember some of those multiple-choice college questions, the answer to this question is true, true and unrelated. It is true that there is a backlash against the new Spiderman and it is true that we still have a racial problem in the United States but these two things are not related. Spiderman is an American icon. It is hard to drastically alter an American icon without getting significant backlash. If Marvel comics wants to reach out to the Black community or the Latino community then they need to create a different character who is likable like Spiderman.

Hancock was a great character. But he was designed to be imperfect. He was designed to be an antihero. The American people embraced Hancock, the movie, brilliantly played by Will Smith. The film grossed over $150 million in the United States. It grossed over $650 million worldwide, including cable and DVD sales. America does have a racial problem, but we’re getting better. 30 years ago, a Black man playing a dysfunctional superhero would’ve been laughed out of the studio. Oh, and remember, in Hancock, Will Smith’s love interest was Charlize Theron, one of the most stunning white women on the planet. Come on! Just think if Sidney Poitier or Bill Cosby played in any movie in the 1960s or 1970s where they had a love interest of the caliber of Charlize Theron. As a society, we have changed. We are not the same as we were 20 or 30 or 40 years ago. Yet we still have racial problems in the United States. Anyway, my two cents.

From TPM:

He explained that “in May, we had 41% unemployment among black teenagers in America.” That means if Republicans can put on a brave face, they might be able to turn the African American vote their way.

Think of the social catastrophe of 41% of a community not being able to find a job. But we have to have the courage to walk into that neighborhood, to talk to that preacher, to visit that small business, to talk to that mother. And we have to have a convincing case that we actually know how to create jobs.

“The morning they believe that, you’re going to see margins in percents you never dreamed of decide there’s a better future,” Gingrich said. “It takes courage, it takes hard work, it takes discipline and it’s doable.”

Now, it is clear that the economy is failing minorities. The economy has been failing minorities for well over a decade. The last time the minority community saw significant employment and significant income growth, Bill Clinton was President. Yet, Newt Gingrich did not want to point out that the economy is failing everybody and has been for more than a decade. Instead, he wanted to point out that a black man was failing the Black community. The implication, of course, is that if he can fail the Black community then, of course, he is failing everybody. President Obama has done the best that he can with a recalcitrant Republican Party. They’ve wanted him to have no success. (Remember Rush Limbaugh’s statement) They have thwarted him on every occasion. Every additional stimulus has been voted down.

Black unemployment from 1980 - 2011

Just think for a moment how President Obama would have been roasted and toasted if he had proposed a targeted stimulus toward the Black community. I wonder what Newt Gingrich would’ve been saying that? The hypocrisy is overwhelming.

In order to win the nomination you have to be able to get people excited. People have to want to go out and ring doorbells, call neighbors and stuff envelopes for you. Herman Cain seems to have the ability to get some in the tea party excited about his candidacy.

You have to be able to raise money. This is a fact of life in United States. If you don’t raise money, you can’t get elected. Just because youare a multimillionaire does not mean that you have the money necessary to win a national election. Only a handful of Americans have the hundreds of millions of dollars necessary to win a national presidential election. Herman Cain isn’t one of those Americans.

You need to come up with a consistent theme. Just hating the Democrats (Obama) is not a theme. Hating Muslims is not a platform that is going to take you far. Just a couple of months ago, Herman Cain stated that he would not hire or appoint in Muslims in his administration. Now, he has stated that Muslims will need to take an oath of loyalty. Craziness.

Back to my original question, can Herman Cain when the Republican nomination? Sure he can. The Republican field remains weak and in disarray. To take advantage of this he’s going to have to work hard and raise a lot of money. He’s going to have to show much discipline, which he hasn’t shown before.

Melissa Harris-Perry

From the Nation:

We are in the final hours of February 2011. These are the last moments of this year’s Black History Month. February is always my busiest month for travel and public lectures as I join dozens of other professors whose research takes on sudden relevance for four short weeks. Typically, I spend some time in February responding to queries about the origins of the month-long observance. Invariably, I am also asked to defend its continuing relevance.

Student reporter: Do we really need a separate black history month now that we have a black president?

Me: Can you name five important African-Americans, not including Martin Luther King Jr. and Barack Obama, and tell me something about their contributions to America?

Student reporter: (Silence)

Me: Yes, we still need Black History Month.

In these waning moments of yet another busy February I admit to feeling particularly defeated by our typical Black History Month approach, which tends to be rooted in a recitation of “little known black history facts” and the celebration of a few accomplished and brilliant individuals. Our contemporary political environment cries out for an urgent, collective immersion in accurate Americanhistory, including its complicated intersections with race and racism. I have a professional nerd fantasy in which I imagine every cable news program devoting a quarter of every hour to the study of American history. I can hear the ratings plummet, but I love the idea of taking just a few moments to inform the public about the broad outlines of our key historical moments, so that these moments cannot be so easily twisted, distorted and misused by ideological movements. Indulge the fantasy for a moment.

What might happen if Americans understood Revolutionary War history? Maybe it would be considerably harder for the Tea Party to convince voters that their anxieties about a president elected with 53 percent of the popular vote by an electorate that enjoys universal adult suffrage are “just the same” as the concerns of colonists who decried taxation without representation under the rule of an absolute monarch. No sustained engagement with The Federalist Papers could allow the narrow, simplistic assertions about the intent of the founding fathers so often present in Tea Party rhetoric. The Tea Party’s ability to deploy the symbols and language of patriotism requires broad and deep ignorance of American history. The American public is woefully unprepared to fact check their bold assertions that they are the keepers of the authentic national legacy. I do not mean to suggest that Revolutionary War history or The Federalist Papers reveal that America’s founders were actually progressive liberals, likely to have subscribed to The Nation. Rather, American history teaches us that the founders were complex, that the founding was contested and that any attempt to reduce American history to soundbite ideology is woefully inadequate. If we shared a deeper and more accurate understanding of our history we would not all be liberals, but perhaps we would be more careful.

While we clearly suffer from a national deficit of historical knowledge in general, we seem to be particularly uninformed about the histories of marginal people: black Americans, non-white immigrants, women of all races, workers and gay Americans. I suspect secession would seem less reasonable to those who had a clear understanding of American Civil War history. I believe Americans might be better equipped to recognize and appreciate the consequences of the racial angst directed at President Obama’s administration if they were better versed in the decades of backlash that followed Reconstruction. I am confident that serious study of American labor history would remind voters of all that is at stake in the current battles to maintain collective bargaining rights. I have no doubt that young women would feel more urgent about protecting their reproductive rights if they were more fully versed in the history of women’s struggle for equality. (more…)

In many schools, history is taught as a bunch of isolated facts that are seldom related to reality. Students are forced to digest facts like…

• In 1885, Sarah E. Goode invented a bed that folded into a cabinet. She was the second black woman to receive a patent.
• Garrett Augustus Morgan created a gas mask.
• Thomas J. Martin patented the fire extinguisher in 1872.
• George T. Sampson invented a clothes dryer in 1892 that used heat from the stove.
• Although Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the light bulb it would have been nothing without the carbon filament. The process for creating a carbon filament which burned in hours instead of minutes was figured out by Lewis Latimer.
• Granville T. Woods invented the multiplex telegraph in 1887. He invented air brakes for trains. He also invented a device that picked up electricity from the “third rail” which made electric powered transit systems possible.
• And Dr. George Franklin Grant invented the world’s first golf tee, which was patented in 1899. He was also the first Black professor at Harvard.

But even lumped together all these individual achievements don’t tell the story of Black History. They don’t tell the story of how many minorities in America thrived despite oppression. Henry Blair, for example, never learned to read or write, yet he invented a corn seed planter in 1834 and signed his patent with an X. Martin Luther King wrote some of his most eloquent essays from a Birmingham Jail.

The story of Black History, then, is the story of overcoming obstacles, of excelling in spite of squalid conditions. As we sit back today and see the people of Egypt taking to the streets and asking for basic human rights, such as fair wages and equal treatment from the government, it is hard not to remember and reflect upon the civil rights movement.

Remember, first, that the civil rights movement did not happen one day in 1963 when the Reverend Dr. King stood before a crowd of hundreds of thousands and declared, “I Have a Dream.” It started after World War II, when our brave black soldiers came back from honorable, heroic service overseas and were then treated as second class citizens, again. The integration of the armed forces in 1948 really started the civil rights ball rolling. The NAACP saw enormous growth in the late 1940s, and its president Roy Wilkins, along with Thurgood Marshall, carefully planned a series of legal battles that culminated in Brown v. Board of Education (of Topeka, KS) in 1954. It was hundreds of thousands of thoughtful, hard-working blacks and whites who made up the civil rights movement that grew into a powerful force that lasted more than 20 years.

Freedom, liberty, and civil rights do not come easy. They did not come easy in America and they will not come easy in Egypt. We must remember that Dr. King, who was devoted to nonviolent change, led a series of marches. It is important that we do not forget people like Huey P. Newton (founder of the Black Panthers) and Malcolm X, who proposed using “any means necessary” to achieve the goal of civil rights for all, were a significant counterbalance to the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

All these people came together and demonstrated, and challenged, and marched, and fought to bestow on people like you and me the freedoms that we enjoy today. In Egypt, too, the people are going to have to fight for change on all fronts. They’ll have to continue with nonviolent demonstrations in the streets. They’re going to have to fight in the courts. They’re going to have to fight in their legislature. When I look at Egypt, I can see just how far we’ve come. When I look at the latest job numbers (unemployment rate of 9%, 8.7 million Americans having lost their jobs since December of 2007), I can see we have a long way to go.

Black History is more than a series of names and events. Black History is an American story of triumph and tribulation. It is a story of a very long struggle which should have meaning for all Americans.

• In Wisconsin, unions are finally standing up. I know there are those in the United States who truly hate unions. They have one or two union stories which have colored their judgment. The reason that you and I don’t work to exhaustion every single day, seven days a week, is because of unions. These are rights which were fought for. Let’s be honest with each other. There are the workers and then there are the executives. The executives give up nothing for free. Workers have to come together in order to bargain with management. If you bargain with management as an individual, most likely, you’ll be fired. Management can get five or 10 more just like you without lifting a finger. So, the only time the management listens to labor is when labor threatens to shut down operations. Unions have fought and won against child labor. Our country is better off because children are in school and not working 12-hour shifts on assembly lines. This wasn’t because of some great president who had some idea. Instead, the child labor laws came about because of unions. The reason we work 40 hours a week is because unions stood up against management. Everyone, in the United States, has benefited from unions standing together. So, I want to be in Madison, Wisconsin with American workers fighting for right that they earned more than 60 years ago, to collective bargaining.

• Sometimes, I find it truly amazing that politicians ever get out of their house. It seems like they’re just too in love with themselves to leave the mirror. They believe their yes-men. Remember Rick Santorum, former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, who thought he could run for president? He could not even win reelection in his own state. Haley Barbour, governor of Mississippi, is one of these egotistical nut jobs. I’m not sure who told him that he was made of presidential stuff, but he has started to believe this. Mississippi is in the bottom five of almost every meaningful category there is. This is what Haley Barbour’s going to run on? Now, let’s not forget that he supported, to be more correct – strongly supported, these Citizen Councils, pro-segregation watchdog groups, vigilante groups which roamed South during the middle part of the last century. Mississippi is coming up with a license plate top honor Nathan Bedford Forrest, the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. If ever you wanted to make a statement that would separate Mississippi from its racist past, this would be the time. Haley Barbour has said nothing. He’s been given opportunities on national stages to stand up and oppose the founder of the Ku Klux Klan on the Mississippi license plate, but no. Haley Barbour may be a brilliant political mind. He may be the Einstein of politics, but I just don’t see it. He reminds me of the Giuliani of politics. Remember when Rudy Giuliani decided he was going to skip Iowa, South Carolina and then sort of run in Florida? Remember when the pundits were saying how he was gonna save all this money and build up his warchest? How did that work out for Rudy Giuliani? Right now, and I’ll happy to say that I’m wrong if I’m wrong, Haley Barbour looks like a buffoon.

On December 24, 1993, Scott County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi arrested the sisters for an armed robbery they vehemently deny participation in. In 1994 they were convicted after being implicated in the crime by three young black men who confessed to the robbery in exchange of a plea bargain that gave them 10 months. The sisters were not offered a plea and went to trial.

Many bloggers have focused on the fact that this armed robbery raked in a whopping $11. I like to focus on the fact that nobody died. I would like to focus on the fact that each of the Scott sisters had a clean record. So, what should be the maximum sentence for armed robbers who are first-time offenders? In Mississippi, the answer is two life sentences. The three guys who admitted to this crime received only 10 months. They took the plea bargain. So what happened?

Right now, I’m going to speculate. I’m going to speculate that the prosecutor saw these two black women as agitators. He saw them as two people who were going against the system. His system. He saw them as two black women who did not show the proper respect to authority. He took it as a personal affront that they had the nerve to contradict him and state, multiple times, that they were innocent. Therefore, the prosecutor acted as any dictator might, with rage, and he overreacted. He threw the book at the Scott sisters. Two life sentences. (Why this is even possible in Mississippi isn’t clear to me. What’s the sentence for jaywalking, a decade of hard labor behind bars?)

Time passed. All of their appeals were denied. The Supreme Court wouldn’t even hear their case. One of the robbers signed an affidavit that stated the Scott sisters had nothing to do with the armed robbery. The Mississippi justice system simply yawned. They didn’t care. Then, one of the Scott sisters developed renal failure while in prison. (Probably from poorly controlled diabetes and hypertension. I’m just guessing, but it is an educated guess. One would figure that as an inmate you could get basic medical care. I guess not.) Jamie is dying. She needs a renal transplant. Her sister Gladys is a match. Somehow, the NAACP got involved. Governor Haley Barbour was petitioned to pardon the women.

Now, here’s where Lady Justice is turned on her head. Haley Barbour, a governor who gives out few pardons, decided to pardon the Scott sisters, although he did not hand out an unconditional pardon. They could be released only if Gladys donated a kidney to Jamie. What? Why is that a condition for their release? This is crazy. Isn’t that coercion? (Let me digress for just a half a second. Organ donation is supposed to be a completely and totally generous act. Transplant physicians do not want their patients pressuring family members to give organs.  It is illegal and violates transplant ethics. This is an extremely slippery slope.) In my opinion, Haley Barbour is wrong in so many different ways. Either commute or pardon the sentences or leave the sisters in jail. To pardon them with this stipulation is simply wrong. It is wrong for the transplant community. It is wrong for Gladys. It is wrong for Mississippi. This can’t be justice. It just doesn’t smell right. What are your thoughts?

As I read more and more about this case I’m left with a couple of questions – Was justice served? How do we prevent this from ever happening again?

This is a thoughtful summary of some of what I think needs to be said about this (the following is from Rachel Maddow’s blog):

Johannes Mehserle was sentenced last Friday, and I’ve been struggling to form a coherent response ever since. Mehserle is the former Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) police officer convicted of involuntary manslaughter in July for the fatal shooting of unarmed BART rider Oscar Grant III during the wee hours of New Year’s Day, 2009.

Mehserle’s excuse for shooting Grant was, for many, quite literally unbelievable: he allegedly mistook his pistol for his Taser. Despite facing 14 years in prison, he received the minimum of two — with parole eligibility in seven months — mainly because the judge really believed that excuse. But in the three smartest takes on the sentencing that I’ve read since, it seems that isn’t even the point.

First, Atlantic writer Ta-Nehisi Coates offers his reasoning as to why he wasn’t outraged over Mehserle’s short sentence:

My sense is that Mehserle, in killing Oscar Grant, made an awful and sickening mistake. But I’m not sure what good comes out of sending him to jail for five or ten years… I think another argument for sentencing Mehserle to serious time is that a message needs to be sent to other cops that the society takes their crimes seriously. But that gets its backwards. It is a society that passes laws which send SWAT teams into gambling houses that is need of a message. These are the cops that we deserve. In that sense, I am not so disturbed that Oscar Grant’s killer will do little, if any, jail time. I am disturbed that this will happen again. I am disturbed that we are so fragile a people, that we know this, and that all we can do is look away.

Coates builds on Julianne Hing‘s reporting for ColorLines magazine, which posits that courtroom results are evidence that real justice for those like Oscar Grant can best be found in prevention of more Oscar Grants:

Prosecutions so often end in acquittal, for one — as the painful verdicts for the cops charged with attacking Amadou Diallo, Sean Bell, Abner Louima and Rodney King all illustrate. But more than that, organizers say the hard work of bringing about long-term change comes only from engaging in systemic overhauls and with sustained pressure on police departments to do preventative work. For that, people must be a steady presence at their local police departments’ public accountability meetings or in their local sheriff’s office.

From HuffPo:

UPDATE: Rick Sanchez has been fired from CNN.

“Rick Sanchez is no longer with the company. We thank Rick for his years of service and we wish him well,’ a CNN statement said.

UPDATE: Rick Sanchez did not appear on Friday’s “Rick List,” the afternoon after his controversial comments about Jon Stewart and Jews surfaced. Sanchez’s regular substitute Brooke Baldwin filled in for him.

ORIGINAL POST: CNN’s Rick Sanchez made controversial comments on a Sirius radio show Thursday, calling Jon Stewart a “bigot” and saying that CNN and the other networks are all run by Jewish people.

Discussing Stewart with radio host Pete Dominick, Sanchez said that the “Daily Show” host has a limited worldview, and called him a “bigot.”

The conversation began with Sanchez decrying “elite, Northeast establishment liberals” who “deep down, when they look at a guy like me, they see a guy automatically who belongs in the second tier, and not the top tier.

“I think to some extent Jon Stewart and [Stephen] Colbert are the same way. I think Jon Stewart’s a bigot,” he said. “I think he looks at the world through, his mom, who was a school teacher, and his dad, who was a physicist or something like that. Great, I’m so happy that he grew up in a suburban middle class New Jersey home with everything you could ever imagine.”

Racism, sexism, fat-ism and short-ism are simply variations of that old cheer “We’re Number One.” It is not simply a problem in the United States but I believe it is part of the human condition, we like to separate into clans or groups. Whether it is Republicans versus Democrats or the Longhorns versus the Sooners, we all like to be part of a group. Teenagers instinctively gravitate to those who accept them. This is exactly why gangs are popular among teenagers. It Is a feeling of acceptance and it is us versus them. It is from within these clans that our ancestors learned to hunt and fish and, most importantly, to survive. Being able to recognize those that mean us harm from those who are part of us was an essential trait for hundreds of thousands of years. We’re not in a fix that evolutionary trait in 50 years or even 100 years.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying that racism is a good thing. Instead, I’m saying that racism is a part of us. Curiosity and altruism are also a part of us. This is what gives the human condition so many interesting facets. We can reach out and embrace those that are different from us. This is also essential in our evolution. If we only stayed with our clan, we would’ve become too inbred and died off. Instead, we had to have a balance. Caution and curiosity have to be balanced in such a way that we don’t naïvely walk into strange situations which may result in our death and, on the other hand, we have to have enough curiosity in order to mingle with those who are different than we are in order to learn new techniques of hunting, fishing, preserving food and the like.

So, I don’t think I will be able to twitch my nose and have racism go away. Instead, we have to understand that we need to force ourselves to accept those who are different than we are. We need to suppress our instinct to chastise, to belittle and discriminate against those who are not like us. We are never going to get it perfectly right. In my book, this is okay. In my book if we are all aware of it and we all try to embrace our fellow man, we are on the path to enlightenment. That’s all we can ever hope for.

From HuffPo:

In conversation Tuesday with a black female caller who was complaining about her white husband’s racist friends and their use of the word, Schlessinger said:

Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is n****, n*****, n*****. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.

After a break, the caller said she was appalled by Schlessinger’s use of the word.

“Oh, then I guess you don’t watch HBO or listen to any black comedians,” she said. “My dear, the point I am trying to make…we’ve got a black man as president and we’ve got more complaining about racism than ever. I think that’s hilarious.”

Schlessinger and the caller then got into an exchange about the use of the word:

CALLER: Is it OK to say that word? Is it ever OK to say that word?
DR. LAURA: It depends how it’s said. Black guys talking to each other seem to think it’s ok.
CALLER: But you’re not black, they’re not black, my husband is white.
DR. LAURA: Oh, I see, so a word is restricted to race. Got it. Can’t do much about that.
CALLER: I can’t believe someone like you is on the radio spewing out the n***** word, and I hope everybody heard it.
DR. LAURA: I didn’t spew out the n***** word!
CALLER: You said “n*****, n*****, n*****” and I hope everybody heard it.
DR. LAURA: Yes they did, and I’ll say it again: n*****, n*****, n***** is what you hear on HBO.
[Crosstalk]
DR. LAURA: Why don’t you let me finish a sentence? Don’t take things out of context. Don’t NAACP me, leave them in context.
“If you’re that hypersensitive about color and don’t have a sense of humor, don’t marry outside of your race,” Schlessinger said after hanging up with the caller.

I’m going to try to stick to the old boring issues that plaque this country. We need jobs. I’m sorry I really don’t care what Dr. Laura has to say about almost anything.

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I talked about this today on Local Edge Radio. Many people never evolve. Some you do change never talk about it because in today’s world it is showing weakness. Shirley Sherrod changed her world view and had the nerve to talk about it. She should be bronzed.

From Glen Greenwald:

Everyone is presumably aware by now of the facts surrounding the disgusting fraud perpetrated on Shirley Sherrod, engineered by Andrew Breitbart, amplified by Fox News, and meekly submitted to by the Obama administration.  Those who aren’t can read excellent commentary from Jamelle Bouie, Joan Walsh, and Chris Martinez.  Much has been written about the incomparable sleaze of Breitbart, the standard propaganda boost from Fox News, and the typical cowardice of the administration in the face of such attacks.  All of that is well established by now and quite unsurprising, so I want to focus on what ought to be the enduring lesson from this ugly episode:  the courage of Shirley Sherrod.

Just as CNN fired Octavia Nasr for one of the few insightful and interesting observations she ever voiced about the Middle East, Sherrod’s speech — which caused her to be fired — is simply inspiring in its uncommon candor, courage and wisdom.  Few people are willing so publicly to confess to tribal biases and detail how they struggle to overcome them, even though that’s a challenge whichany person who evolves at some point must confront.  That process — far more than the pretense of having always been bias-free — requires difficult self-examination, and its public discussion offers vitally needed lessons for everyone.  Many people are unwilling ever to engage that process privately, let alone candidly describe it publicly.  Those with the courage to do so, like Sherrod, should be heralded for that candor.  Instead, she was slandered, falsely disparaged, and fired.

Contrary to the excuse being offered by those who did all of that, her actual message — that she was plagued by racial biases decades ago and overcame them with the recognition that it is poverty that unites people in need — was clearly evident even from the deceitfully edited Breitbart video.  This is part of what she said on that edited video:

That’s when it was revealed to me that it’s about poor versus those who have.  And not so much about white. It is about white and black, but you know — it opened my eyes.

But – just as happened with Octavia Nasr and so many before her,including the now-destroyed ACORN — the blinding, lying,depressingly common right-wing hysteria churned out by Brietbart/Fox meant that no nuances were permitted, no reason could breathe, and few people had the courage to defend Sherrod or even demand that she be allowed to speak before being thrown to the trash heap. (more…)

National Tea Party

I’m sorry. I know I have really spent way too much time on the subject, which is exactly the kind of thing conservatives want. They love for us to focus on things that really don’t matter. I had a small post the other day, which was really meant for my readers to briefly look at and say, “well, that was obvious.” It didn’t really work out that way. So, I’ve written a lot of responses and comments covering three things — The National Tea Party, the new Black Panthers and the NAACP.

Conservatives, for the most part, hate answering questions. Instead, they like to stay on offense. They like to answer a question with a question. If you asked them, for example, why they tolerate racists in the National Tea Party, they will respond with something like, “Why didn’t the NAACP condemn the horrible rhetoric of the New Black Panthers?” Well, the NAACP did condemn the garbage that was spewing out of the New Black Panthers. The NAACP even pointed out that the new Black Panthers are not part of the NAACP. Really, many of the racist statements are coming from representatives of the Tea Party.

The New Black Panthers are a smokescreen to avoid talking about the real issue, racism in the Tea Party. They are a nothing group. They have little or no membership. They do not speak for a large group of African-Americans. They have no power to influence policy. In my mind, I will throw them in with many of the hate groups on the right who are part of those armed militias. I do not believe that they accurately represent any major religion. I find nothing that I’ve seen or heard from this group to be attractive. As a matter fact I find them rather repulsive. A call to kill babies, White or Black or Brown, makes Mister Shabazz an evil, twisted man. Oh, finally, no one attested to being intimated by the New Black Panthers. Not one person.

The National Tea Party is a major element within the conservative movement. Top Republican officials have begun to distance themselves from the racial rhetoric of people like Mark Williams. The frustration that many Americans feel is legitimate. I believe that the Tea Party has taken those frustrations and is trying to use them for personal gain. Specifically, Republican gain. The problem isn’t taxes. The problem is Congress. The problem is that good people on both the right and the left have worked hard to elect who they thought were “good” officials. Whether it was the Contract with America or the recent Democratic takeover of Congress, Americans have had their expectations dashed time and time again. We’ve seen Congress become a rich man’s country club. More than half of the Senators are millionaires. A significant number of Representatives are well off. Lobbyists are smiling. Major corporations are smiling. Profits for major corporations continue to increase while wages have been stagnant for almost 25-30 years. This is our problem. Wedge issues are not our problem. Until we fix Congress, we’re going to continue to have groups like the Tea Party prey on the frustrations and anger of Americans.

This is the problem with race relations. He cannot talk past each other. You have to talk to each other. If you go to start a conversation suggesting that you are aligned with Al Qaeda and the Taliban, that conversation is a nonstarter. If you start a conversation weighing out the litany of abuses that Whites have inflicted upon Africa and Asia in the North American Indians, you’re not getting anywhere. The atrocities are well-known. So, move forward.

Now, let’s see what Tim Wise had to say about this. This gets good:

Let’s play a game, shall we? The name of the game is called “Imagine.” The way it’s played is simple: we’ll envision recent happenings in the news, but then change them up a bit. Instead of envisioning white people as the main actors in the scenes we’ll conjure – the ones who are driving the action – we’ll envision black folks or other people of color instead. The object of the game is to imagine the public reaction to the events or incidents, if the main actors were of color, rather than white. Whoever gains the most insight into the workings of race in America, at the end of the game, wins.

So let’s begin.

Imagine that hundreds of black protesters were to descend upon Washington DC and Northern Virginia, just a few miles from the Capitol and White House, armed with AK-47s, assorted handguns, and ammunition. And imagine that some of these protesters —the black protesters — spoke of the need for political revolution, and possibly even armed conflict in the event that laws they didn’t like were enforced by the government? Would these protester — these black protesters with guns — be seen as brave defenders of the Second Amendment, or would they be viewed by most whites as a danger to the republic? What if they were Arab-Americans? Because, after all, that’s what happened recently when white gun enthusiasts descended upon the nation’s capital, arms in hand, and verbally announced their readiness to make war on the country’s political leaders if the need arose.

Imagine that white members of Congress, while walking to work, were surrounded by thousands of angry black people, one of whom proceeded to spit on one of those congressmen for not voting the way the black demonstrators desired. Would the protesters be seen as merely patriotic Americans voicing their opinions, or as an angry, potentially violent, and even insurrectionary mob? After all, this is what white Tea Party protesters did recently in Washington.

Imagine that a rap artist were to say, in reference to a white president: “He’s a piece of shit and I told him to suck on my machine gun.” Because that’s what rocker Ted Nugent said recently about President Obama. (more…)