This is one of the best articles on this subject I have read in some time. It sums up how I feel on this subject. African Americans, and others, should beware of immigrant bashing
With the United States at war in the Middle East, journalists often tell us what is being said on "the Arab street." Well, on America's black street, debates over immigration reform are percolating.
Surveys say that African Americans overwhelmingly see immigration reform as a moral and civil rights issue. But others, especially low-wage workers, fear that legalizing 12 million undocumented workers will add to their misery.
Such barbershop talk found its way into the mainstream media earlier this month when T. Willard Fair, president and CEO of the Greater Miami Urban League, testified in Washington that newly arrived immigrants are taking jobs that low-wage African Americans otherwise would have.
Though Fair is hardly the only African American who feels this way, his congressional testimony suddenly made him the black face of a largely white anti-immigrant movement that includes as controversial a group as the Minutemen.
An outfit like the Minutemen, syndicated columnist Earl Ofari Hutchinson noted, has few visible black supporters, but still chose to kick off its 13-city caravan against immigration from a park in a predominately black section of Los Angeles.
Hutchinson said it was "a shrewd, cynical ploy to capitalize on the split among blacks over illegal immigration," by a group whose Web site is "filled with xenophobic, nativist, borderline race-tinged code word taunts at the 'invasion' of 'hordes' of 'illegal aliens.' "
As for Fair, he's featured in an ad that has appeared in The Washington Post and Roll Call sponsored by the Coalition for the Future of American Workers.
CFAW, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project, is a front organization for racists and hate-mongers. Fair says he knows nothing about any such connection.
As a Black man myself, I would find it hard to be linked to any group that is itself linked to hate groups. This would be true even if I myself somehow found myself in agreement with them on any issue. I have self respect!
But the question remains: Why would anyone believe the same cabal that has actively worked against black interests suddenly is deeply concerned about protecting the interests of black workers?
Black people must take care not to be drawn into a war against poor, brown-skinned people, when what's at the heart of the immigration debate, it seems to me, is that low-wage workers, native-born or legal or undocumented immigrants, are often pitted against one another, with all being ruthlessly exploited.
The descendants of slaves, of all people, mustn't buy into this latest wave of anti-immigrant hysteria, but it happens every few years.
Politics may make strange bedfellows, but helping to promote a racist agenda is going too far.
Amen!
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POLITICS
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Let's hope Bush listens to a "moderate" Democrat. Although my personal thinking is he will nominate a Clarence Thomas/Janice Brown if he doesn't just ignore Sen. Pryor.
But I wonder when the Mods will ever learn???
U.S. Senator Mark Pryor is urging President Bush to nominate an African-American to fill the federal judgeship in Arkansas left vacant with the death of U.S. District Judge George Howard, Jr. (editors note: who is Black)
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I still remain somewhat hopefull that this bill will pass. Will Bush try to help pass it so he has somekind of legacy with minorities (does he even care)? Right now his legacy will be he has increased Black hatred of the GOP with his Katrina non-response and Voter caging, and he lost Latino support after briefly winning them over (are non-Cuban Latinos starting to hate the GOP?) by being unable to deliver his party on immigration reform.
Will the District of Columbia finally get a vote in Congress?
It's not the prospect of justice for Utahans, however, that most excites us. Rather, it's the prospect of justice for the District of Columbia. Because, should Utah gain a fourth voting member, the District of Columbia will also gain one--which is one more than it has now. As part of an ingenious solution to overcome Republican objections to awarding the District a meaningful seat, GOP Representative Tom Davis of Virginia and his Democratic colleague Eleanor Holmes Norton, the District's nonvoting House delegate, hitched the predominately Democratic District's fortunes to the predominately Republican Utah's by proposing to expand the House from 435 to 437 members, with one of the new seats going to Utah and the other going to the District.
The case for D.C. voting rights is obvious and has been made in this space before. To make it, again, briefly: District citizens pay federal taxes; they're subject to federal laws; they fight--and die--in America's wars. Moreover, it's problematic, to say the least, that at a time when the U.S is trying to export democracy abroad, democracy is being denied to those who live in the nation's capital. Now that Davis and Norton have come up with a way--their vanilla state for chocolate city trade-off--to give the District voting representation in Congress without affecting the House's partisan balance, the case for D.C. voting rights would seem to be a slam dunk.
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CULTURE
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Rap/hip hop music sales are down. Why? As a fan I think it's because it's lost its social commentary wing (let's face it there was always a pary wing and gansta wing) and became almost completely focused on violent-pop or gangsta-pop (meaning it celebrates violence and big living but avoids controversial political/social commentary other then the "system isn't fair" which isn't hard commentary) what ever you want to call it. The same thing killed Rock and Roll when corporate America turned it from protest music into sex-pop. How does one rapper Atlanta's TI deal with this?
T. I.: In Rap, Inner War Can Be a Trap
T. I. is hardly the first successful rapper to come down with split-personality disorder. Eminem made millions by pitting the tormented Marshall Mathers against the mischievous Slim Shady. Tupac Shakur morphed into Makaveli when he made his final album. Jay-Z briefly retired from rapping to become a record executive known as Shawn Carter. ("Back to Shawn Carter the hustler — Jay-Z is dead," as he once put it.) Q-Tip begat Kamaal the Abstract; Nelly split his third album into "Sweat" and "Suit" discs; Ice Cube split one album into "Life" and "Death," another into "War" and "Peace." Often, successful rappers don’t crumble; they splinter.
So now it’s T. I.’s turn. Last year he released his glorious fourth album, "King": a thunderous disc full of virtuoso rhymes that became the top-selling rap album of 2006. (Though, to be honest, there was scant competition.) Last week the follow-up, the disappointing "T. I. vs. T. I. P.," arrived on the Internet, illegal but ubiquitous; the official version arrives in shops today, from Atlantic Records. Fans can choose their cover: a pinstriped T. I. or a sweatshirted T. I. P. But the music is the same, and so is the face, plus or minus a scowl.
This splintering began when T. I. was Clifford Harris, a skinny hustler from the Bankhead neighborhood in Atlanta. As a boy he was known as Tip, which became T. I. P. after he started rapping, and then T. I. after he got a major record deal. In 2003 he released his second album, "Trap Muzik," which included "T. I. vs. T. I. P.," the song that gave his new album its title. Even then, T. I., the ambitious hip-hop star, was trying to tame T. I. P., the impetuous kid from Bankhead.
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MONEY
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Jazz cafe strikes note for neighborhood unity. "We used to be a community that talked to one another. We've lost that."
"We've found that many relationships are started and built through venues like this. We want to help the community become more of what it used to be."
As an African-American entrepreneur, Belton felt it was particularly important for African-Americans to have access to premium coffee outside of mega-chains like Starbucks, which have been slow to set up shop in black neighborhoods.
Because coffee has its origins in Africa - Ethiopia to be exact - Belton believes African-Americans must become more educated about the rich history of coffee as a way to connect to their historical past. That is why he daily shows video footage on his shop's flat-screen TV of coffee being produced in Africa.
"Coffee is comparable to wine, the uniqueness of it, the quality of it," Belton says. "For African-Americans, it's like black gold. It's important for us to understand that Maxwell House and Folgers aren't the people who created coffee."
Neighborhood organizers hope Belton's jazz cafe will be a catalyst for future revitalization and economic growth in the Enderis Park neighborhood.
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How could the money section of Black Kos not talk about Oprah?
Chicago Tribune: First her television show. Then her magazine. Then a Broadway production. Next on the agenda is the Oprah store. The Chicago-based entertainment mogul will open a retail store near her production studio on the West Side
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Let's get the word out early, prepare for the 2016 Summer Olympic games, OK? My favorite business saying is "luck favors the prepared". The final Olympic city hasn't been chosen, so be prepared if Chicago is chosen! Chicago Tribune: Minority businesses are urged to gear up for 2016 Olympics. Small black-owned firms should consider partnering with others to achieve the scale they will need to bid on large contracts. "We have time to scale up our businesses,"
Chicago can learn a lot from the Atlanta Olympics about including African-Americans in the economic boom the games provide, but the Los Angeles Olympics (editors note: 1984 Olypics) are more of a lesson in what to avoid.
Those are some of the conclusions of an eight-week study by the Kellogg School of Management and the Chicago Urban League, which is launching a major effort to get Chicago's black-owned businesses up to speed for the games. The study identifies "best practices" that Chicago can follow to boost minority involvement if it wins the international competition to host the 2016 Olympic Games.
The study also urged local minority businesses to invest in growth now because if they wait until a Chicago Olympics is a sure thing it will be too late. The city will not know until 2009 if it is the winning bidder.
"This is an incredible opportunity to put on steroids a lot of what we are talking about -- how to create a more robust infrastructure in our communities or build it from the ground up. The Olympics represents an opportunity to do this on an accelerated pace," Cheryle Jackson, the Urban League's new president, said Wednesday.
"If not approached correctly, the Olympics could not only bypass communities, it could exacerbate the gap between the haves and the have-nots," Jackson said.
Mayor Richard Daley and the Chicago Olympic organizing committee have touted the economic benefits that will accrue to struggling communities as a reason to devote millions in public and private resources to bringing the games here, but such benefits are not guaranteed. The games last only 16 days and all profits flow back to Olympic committees.
Still, visitors to a Chicago Olympics are projected to spend $2 billion, and more than 81,000 full-time jobs would be created, more than half of them in the service sector.
In looking at the experiences of other cities the Urban League found that Atlanta did a lot of things right, including making African-American participation a priority and ensuring that the black community was represented on the committee that awarded contracts, the study found.
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EDUCATION
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As progressives the issue that we can all unite on is equal access. This is a good issue to rally around because it brings along progressives who both support and oppose Affirmative-Action.
The surge in AP programs and college-prep testing has not reached most Black students, according to a review of 2006 exam results in 30 school systems with about 5,000 or more black high school students.
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LAW
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This a must read, it a good lesson to much of the progressive movement. This is a clear lesson on how if you can't beat them you can join them. It's also a lesson in how conservatives can turn on a dime, with a straight face, on any argument if it helps them win.
How conservatives appropriated Brown v. Board of Education
The Supreme Court's decision in last week's school desegregation cases represents the culmination of a 50-year-old debate about the meaning and content of Brown v. Board of Education. The conservatives have now taken over Brown, no question.
Justices in the majority—like the new chief justice, John Roberts, and Justice Clarence Thomas—can invoke Brown for the proposition that the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prevents states from treating individuals differently on the basis of race. They invoke the mantra of the "color-blind Constitution" to strike down voluntary school desegregation plans in Seattle and Louisville, Ky.
In passionate dissents, justices John Paul Stevens and Stephen G. Breyer lament the conservatives' treatment of Brown. Stevens describes their reliance on Brown as "cruel irony." And Breyer describes their comparison of state-mandated racial segregation in the 1950s with contemporary voluntary desegregation plans as a "cruel distortion of history."
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INTERNATIONAL
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Janjaweed Using Rape as 'Integral' Weapon in Darfur, Aid Group Says
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A new report on the crisis in the Darfur region of western Sudan has identified rape as a systematic weapon of ethnic cleansing being used by government-backed Janjaweed militiamen, and said Sudanese laws discriminate against female victims, who face harassment and intimidation at local police stations if they try to report the crime.
The report, "Laws Without Justice: An Assessment of Sudanese Laws Affecting Survivors of Rape," by the humanitarian group Refugees International, said rape was "an integral part of the pattern of violence that the government of Sudan is inflicting upon the targeted ethnic groups in Darfur.
"The raping of Darfuri women is not sporadic or random, but is inexorably linked to the systematic destruction of their communities," the report said. Victims are taunted with racial slurs such as "I will give you a light-skinned baby to take this land from you," according to one woman interviewed in the Touloum refugee camp in Chad, recalling the words of a Janjaweed militiaman who raped her.
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DIARIES OF NOTE THIS WEEK ON DAILY KOS
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Wow it's good to see after all these years or discrimination in ol' Miss. the justice department has finally stepped up and figured out what is what! Miss. Blacks Discriminated Against Whites, Judge Says by diarist politicaljunkie2008
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Is Rick B angry? Maybe he has a right to be angry? If you have strong beliefs on a subject a little anger can be a benefit. You decide. Racism, America and Hate Crime laws by diarist Rick B
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What good does it do to send young men to jail if they only come out better criminals? Rehabilitation, Not Revenge by diarist dnA
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I have noticed this too, the GOP has stopped reaching out to people of color in 2008 POTUS race. Rudy has one of the worse relationships with the Black community I have sean in modern times, and well we all can see where immigration is going (those dam scary brown people)... The Republicans Aren't Even Trying Anymore by diarist Cenk Uygur
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"What to the American Slave is Your Fourth of July? Black America Grieves by diarist Bcgntn
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A you tube video answering the following question Question inner city blacks want answered by Democrats... by diarist Karna
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Always provocative and thoughtfull one of my favorite diarist Colorblindness Is Racism...It's Also A Lie by diarist dnA