Joke: France Is Cancelling Haiti's Current Debt to Paris

France has already said it was canceling all of Haiti's 56 million euro (US$77 million) debt to Paris. The aid package also will include reconstruction money, emergency aid and $40 million in support for the Haitian government's budget.

What's so funny?

What the Haiti?!: The Saga Continues

As food distribution improves, Haitians want U.S to 'take over'.

Notice I'm linking an article and not poll.

Because I think that even if a few people would want the US to "take over," that doesn't represent any Haitian majority by any means. To lead an article with the claims of a few as though they're the sentiments of all Haitians, as though the US hasn't already done our share of damage to Haitian democracy and economy, is irresponsible, arrogant and racist.

They Did What to Their Own Kids?

I think it's not talked about a lot, though Macon D does on occasion, but racism is bad for white people, too. Especially white kids. Now, let's be clear. Child abuse knows no racial boundaries. And so the truth as truth doesn't surprise me, it grieves me.

Michelle Chen
“Good White Stock”: Child Refugees of the British Empire

Forced migration, displacement, and racial social engineering are ugly modern phenomena that we typically associate with the denigration of oppressed racial and religious groups.

But we recently got a glimpse of a colonization effort that in some ways inverted the brutality of the imperial project. From the 1940s through the 1960s, the British government sent thousands of children—many of them from poor and distressed homes—to Australia in a program that blended social reform with manifest destiny. The massive migration was part of a scheme to transplant“good white stock,” to outer territories, including New Zealand, Canada and Rhodesia, because, as one clergy official reportedly explained, “we are terrified of the Asian hordes.”

In personal narrative on the “Lost Children of the Empire,” Eileen Fairweather recounts stories of forced migration in language that smacks of the child welfare crisis in communities of color:

Only a third of the child migrants were actually orphans - the rest had been abandoned by their parents or effectively stolen from them. As was common at the time, some parents put their children into care during hard times - a situation they hoped would be temporary. But when they returned for them, they were often told the children had died.

To make matters worse, the young migrants' documents were frequently destroyed, so they did not even know their parents' names and had no way back into the lives from which they had been ripped....

Michael's worst tormentor enjoyed holding him naked upside-down over a river while beating him, so that the water drowned out his cries. 'He told me it was easy to drown and accidents happen all the time.' Another enjoyed setting his dogs on him.

So this was where Britain's great experiment in replenishing the colonies had led. It was a brutal yet predictable outcome for the little boy abandoned to predatory priests.

The wholesale removal of children from their communities and into alien homes condemned many to devastating physical and sexual abuse. They were captives in a land to which they were supposed to deliver civilization and the great white hope. We'll never know exactly how many children and families were harmed. But the Australian government's recent, long-awaited apology for inflicting this trauma (coupled with apologies to others institutionalized by the country's cruel, discriminatory child welfare policies) suggests that the scope of the injustice, generations later, has barely begun to come to light. As with other struggles to redress historical grievances, demands for reparations haven't brought recompense for survivors.

The child migration system reveals the monstrous consequences of British imperialism's white-supremacist ideology, not only for indigenous peoples but for the colonizers' “own kind” as well. Mythologies of race privilege corrode society from within and dehumanize everyone--even “good white stock”--in the name of the grand hypocrisy of empire.


Posted at 5:47 AM, Nov 26, 2009 in Child Welfare | History | Immigration | Youth | Permalink |

You Have Got to Be Kidding Me

I keep myself informed. I read books, news articles, opinion pieces. Occasionally I check out George Mason University's History News Network. Sometimes there're good pieces. Other times, there's this: How Obama Might Change the Politics of Race in Unexpected Ways by James C. Cobb, history professor and author.

It's another one of those pieces that essentially argue, "with a black person in the Oval Office it might be more difficult than ever to blame these clouds on whites."

Of course, that's just plain ole false. As is the assertion that African Americans debated whether or not Obama is "black enough." It's as false as the "gospel according to a certain Mr. Cosby."

Here's the thing. There're probably millions of black voters who are upset with Obama's "personal responsibility" speeches that aren't intended for us at all. He mentioned his intention to continue focusing on personal responsibility in his speech at the NAACP's "Youth Night"; but in the speech, he talked more forcefully about structural and institutional racism that creates barriers for African Americans. Unfortunately, the MSM missed the part. Which, isn't surprising. Mainstream America often only hears what it wants.

The problem with Prof. Cobb's assessment is that it's the same assessment made after Counter Reconstruction. The argument that racism didn't hold former slaves and their descendants back, it was: their unfamiliarity with freedom; their inferior morality and intelligence. Sound familiar? Booker T Washington played Bill Cosby's roll then, arguing that black only had to concentrate on personal responsibility and economic education, and the future would be theirs. It was a lie then. It's a lie now. White America has been saying for over a century that racism isn't as bad as African Americans make it out to be. When are we finally gonna stop acting like that may be true. Since when did anyone trust those privileged by an unjust system to really call the system what it is? So why do we trust white America's assessment now?

If Obama success signaled a death nail for America's original sin, he wouldn't be roundly praised by white corporate media outlets for repeating to African Americans something we hear every Sunday as though he was saying something black folks just don't say to ourselves. If his success were anything for white America to hail, the dap his wife Michelle gave him wouldn't have made national news. He wouldn't have to beat back lies about his religion and true intentions. Michelle wouldn't face questions about her patriotism. Faux News wouldn't describe Michelle as Obama's "baby mama" then wonder why so many black women are "angry."

Let's just suffice it to say if racism wasn't an issue that Obama's facing during this election, much less something everyday African Americans face daily, he could be "black enough" without worrying about how many votes it would cost him. I'm going to write a post on this soon, but let me just say here that the politics of grievance will only be over when the grievance stops. It continues.

The truest thing Prof. Cobb says is, "If the Democrats manage to win in November, however, the full potential of their victory will be realized only if they can walk the fine line between celebrating a truly momentous achievement as an emotional springboard toward other such accomplishments and allowing that celebration to degenerate into an orgy of self-congratulation that has precisely the opposite effect."

But let's remember, the aim of the Civil Rights Movement and many black activists today isn't just to put black and brown faces in places of high position in the same ole Euro-centric, white privileged system. The goal was and is to radically change the system to end all kinds of injustice, race and gender as well as economic injustice.

Cause Lord I 'clare, the more things change, the more the stay the same.

A Special Brand of Patiotism

A Special Brand Of Patriotism with My Comments

By Eugene Robinson
Friday, July 4, 2008; A17



Anyone who took U.S. history in high school ought to know that one of the five men killed in the Boston Massacre, the atrocity that helped ignite the American Revolution, was a runaway slave named Crispus Attucks. The question the history books rarely consider is: Why?

Think about it for a moment. For well over a century, British colonists in North America had practiced a particularly cruel brand of slavery, a system of bondage intended not just to exploit the labor of Africans but to crush their spirit as well. Backs were whipped and broken, families systematically separated, traditions erased, ancient languages silenced. Yet a black man -- to many, nothing more than a piece of property -- chose to stand and die with the patriots of Boston.

Now think about the Buffalo Soldiers and the Tuskegee Airmen. Think about Dorie Miller, who, like so many black sailors in the segregated U.S. Navy of the 1940s, was relegated to kitchen duty -- until Pearl Harbor, when Miller rushed up to the deck of the sinking USS West Virginia, carried wounded sailors to safety and then raked Japanese planes with fire from a heavy machine gun until he ran out of ammunition.

Think about Colin Powell -- but also think about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, a former Marine. And consider, as we celebrate Independence Day, how steadfast and complicated black patriotism has always been.

The subject is particularly relevant now that the first African American with a realistic chance of becoming president, Barack Obama, has felt compelled to give a lengthy speech explaining his own patriotism. It is not common, in my experience, for sitting U.S. senators to be questioned on their love of country -- to be grilled about a flag pin, for example, or critiqued on the posture they assume when the national anthem is played. For an American who attains such high office, patriotism is generally assumed.

It seems that some people don't want to give Obama the benefit of that assumption, however, and I have to wonder whether that's because he's black. And then I have to wonder why.

The fact that African American patriotism is never simple doesn't mean it's in any way halfhearted; to the contrary, complicated relationships tend to be the deepest and strongest. It's a historical fact that black soldiers and sailors who fought overseas in World War II came home to Southern cities where they had to ride in the back of the bus -- and that they were angry that the nation for which they had sacrificed would treat them this way. To some whites, I guess, it may seem logical to be suspicious of black patriotism -- to believe that anger must somehow temper love of country.

It doesn't, of course. It never has. Black Americans are just more intimately and acutely aware of some of our nation's flaws than many white Americans might be. This generalization is less true of my sons than of my parents, and I hope that someday it won't be true at all. I think one must add here, that for the most part, both white and African Americans are ignorant of the reality of present day racism. What Robinson says may be true, but it's not because the country has gotten astronomically better, or that white Americans are more aware, but that African Americans are less. But only in the past half-century has the United States begun to fully extend the rights of citizenship to African Americans -- and only in the past year has the idea that a black man might actually be elected president been more than a plot device for movies and television shows. We're someplace we've never been.

Michelle Obama was sharply attacked for saying that she felt proud of her country for the first time in her adult life. Her phrasing may have been impolitic, but I know exactly what she meant. I knew what she meant, too. The last time I was really proud of my country, I was in elementary school. By middle school, I was starting to have doubts about the greatness of the US of A.

This isn't about whether or not Barack Obama wins. Just the fact that he might win is an incredible change for this country -- and recognizing the importance of that change is, to me, the very essence of patriotism.

What's unpatriotic is pretending that the past never happened. What's unpatriotic is failing to acknowledge that we've struggled with race for nearly 400 years. What's unpatriotic is relegating "black history" to the month of February when, really, it's American history, without which this nation could never be what it is today. Here is where I really, wholeheartedly agree with Robinson. Presently, I can't think of anything to add.

My father, Harold I. Robinson, served in the Army during World War II and has lived to witness this transformative moment of possibility. My father-in-law, the late Edward R. Collins, was a sailor who saw action in the South Pacific; he rests at Arlington National Cemetery. I have no patience with anyone who thinks that patriots don't have brown skin. For my part, one of my grandfathers fought in WWII, at least two of my uncles and my father were in Vietnam, a cousin had been in Afganistan. The fact that the country doesn't treat peoples of color any better than it does is part of the reason you want see me joining the military. My health notwithstanding.

eugenerobinson@washpost.com
dreamsofthesouthwind@gmail.com

L.A. Teachers Fired for Being Too "Afro-centric"

Yeah. You read right, folks. There're a few links with the details. But basically, it works like this:

A teacher in Watts, Karen Salazar, contextualized her lessons so they would be more relevant to her mostly black students. Administrators accuse her of being too "Afro-centric" and brainwashing the kids.

Ostensibly, as I've learned from Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong by James W. Loewen, part of the problem with being too "Afro-centric" is that children may not love America. Oh. The horror.

This also illustrates the truth that black students don't refer to academic achievement as "acting white" for nothing. I've been there. You have to sit and listen to lies, exaggerations, denials, and half-truths, and become proficcient in reciting said lied, exagerrations, denials, and half-truths. I know did. And I hated it. This teacher shouldn't be fired. She should be given a gold medal. But her firing illustrates part of my reluctance to go into primary and secondary education. If she can get fired in Los Angeles, California for using 3-pages of the Autobiography of Malcolm X, a rap by the late Tupac Shukar, and a Langston Hughes poem, when I start teaching about the horror of slavery, the re-enslavement of African Americans after the Civil War, and the dozens of white racist riots around the country (And by that I mean, a least couple of dozens. There were probably more.), the African societies the slaves came from, the Black Freedom Movement and the backlash to the Movement - I could not just lose my job, they might even take my kids!

No, I don't have any, but you get my point. This firing is nonsense. And it's not the Los Angeles United School District that's "unique" here. Ms. Salazar is the unique one. Not many teachers take the chance she did. And kudos to her.

Here are those other links:
Feminsite
L.A. Times
VivirLatino
AngryBrownButch
Democracy Now!

Long Buried . . .

The Chicago Tribune has an article today, "Long Buried Story of Black America," that excites me as a historian and anti racist. It details new archaeological findings of towns free blacks in the Midwest started before and after the Civil War. It's exciting to me as an historian because, of course, it'll tell us more about history. What thrills me as an anti racist is that these findings subtracts credence from the story-line of African Americans as passive participators in history who constantly have things done to them. It also undercuts the recent myth of African Americans having "victims' mentality." You really gotta read the article for yourself. It's marvelous!

In other news, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie has written a very cogent essay for the Washington Post titled, "The Color of an Awkward Conversation." You can contrast these two articles, especially "Long Buried Story," with some of the comments to Adichie's essay.