Now, the "Man" Is Coming for You, too, Wh*tey!

And to make a point that hard-working white Americans need to hear: the people who saw nothing wrong with loan officers lying both to the client and to the underwriter so the cost of the loan will be higher leading to higher profits for the company and higher bonuses for the loan officer also see nothing wrong with the exorbitant bonuses received by the executives who brought down the global economy. Mark my words chumpy: when shit gets to flying, everybody gets hit. Instead of listening to the idiots who propagate the lie the affirmative action is "reverse" racism, you should be listening to those of us tell you that "injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere."

That's one of my better quotes. Although I'll add here, for the love of all that's good and holy, quit equating white women and people of color to animals and/or fetuses. It's insulting, and it does more harm than good.

You Down with O4P?

Yeah, you know me!

You down with O4P?

Yeah, you know me!

Who's down with O4P?

Everybody!! [Updated to include a link to a fabulous story over at Racism Review.]

Sorry, I got caught up. But Occupy Wall Street has gained my respect. It's not just Wall St they're occupying anymore. No, they're now occupying prisons and jails, too. And the reason I've decided to give them a second thumb's up? They've come to realize that:

Mass incarceration is the new Jim Crow. Between 1970 and 1995, the incarceration of African Americans increased 7 times. Currently African Americans make up 12 % of the population in the U.S. but 53% of the nation’s prison population. There are more African Americans under correctional control today—in prison or jail, on probation or parole—than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began.

The prison system is the most visible example of policies of punitive containment of the most marginalized and oppressed in our society. Prior to incarceration, 2/3 of all prisoners lived in conditions of economic hardship. While the perpetrators of white-collar crime largely go free.

Forced Deportation. Sound Familiar?

An Apology Ceremony That We Need to Publicize

By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board
Feruary 16, 2012

On February 26th, a ceremony is to take place in California apologizing to the approximately 400,000 people of Mexican ancestry who were deported from the USA in a spate of ethnic cleansing that gripped the USA during the Depression. What is at stake in this ceremony is not only the apology but what it says about racism and ethnic cleansing in times of economic crisis.

Approximately two million people of Mexican ancestry were deported from the USA during the Depression. This was not only Mexican nationals, but Chicanos as well, i.e., US citizens of Mexican ancestry. This was a blatant example of ethnic cleansing taking place in the USA which destroyed families and exiled family members, in some cases indefinitely.

If the "New Rule" Fits . . .

If I find a clip with better sound, I'll post it.

The Political Party What Keeps Crying "Voter Fraud"

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

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

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

Stop Corporate Funded Voter Suppression (Updated)

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!

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!

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.

Has Columbus Just Discovered Injustice, Too?

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.

"The Help": the True Story

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)

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.

Oh, yeah! Wells-Fargo Under Investigation

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)

You really have to check out this link:

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

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.

Douthat, Really?

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!

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

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

Defending the Dream

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.

Prosperity Gospel?

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'!

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

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!"

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

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.

The Revolution Will Be Taught, Part I

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"

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.

Merry Christmas!

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

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

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Gov. Paterson Got This Right; Barbour Should Do Likewise

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

(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?

Homie Don't Play That!

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!"

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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."

Progressives, Your Approval Waiting is Low

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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.

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

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.

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

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.

The Opposite of Love Is Not Hate

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.

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

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."

Did You Get the Email?

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!"

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:

That Degree Don't Turn Ya White (Updated)

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.?

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

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!"

You'll Thank Me Later

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

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Budge This!!

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?

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.”

It's Too Late to Plead the Fifth

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?

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

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!

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

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:

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

(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)