Commentary
Robinswing, Black Kos Editor
It seems clear to me that America is not really ready to discuss race. Not really. Not nearly. America talks around race. America walks around race. Race continues to fuel the engine of institutions from banks to prisons. We just don't want to talk about it.
When the so called birthers start in on our President, they dont’t really say what is in their hearts. The blackwoman would have more respect for them if they did. If they just flat out said,"He’s black, not one of us and I don’t like it" I would respect their honesty. Instead they hide behind birth certificate shenanigans. Few in mainstream media call them on it. Instead there is this pretense that this is their real objection and avoid the real opportunity to talk about race and the role it plays in this country.
When Lynn Sweet came up with her gotcha question at the end of a press conference on health, instead of noting the President’s comments that racial profiling happens too often to Blacks and Latinos the press focused upon his calling the actions of the Cambridge police ‘stupid’. Forget the truth of his statement, there was an opening to discuss race and racial profiling. Who took it?
Where were those hardworking journalist giving Americans the statistics which show a disproportionate arrest of Blacks and Latinos in this country? Why were there no man of the street interviews of Blacks and Latinos asking whether they had ever been stopped for driving Black or Brown?
I suspect that many Americans assume that there are more Blacks and Browns in jail and prison simply because these two groups of folk have criminal tendencies. This idea is not only unchallenged but treated as a given. To challenge race would have to be part of the discussion. So far, this hasn't happened.
No discussion of race and the role it plays in our so called criminal justice system. No questioning of police who are charged to serve and protect but who often shoot to kill in minority communities. Or judges who by law must hand out different, harsher sentences in crack cocaine cases than in the cases of those who use the white powder. Guess who this affects?
I do not know of one black person who has not been on the rough end of some kind of racial profiling. When we walk into stores, we are followed. We are stopped by policemen for no reason. One of my sons who married a white woman was stopped and she was asked if she was okay as if she were being kidnapped. I was stopped by a officer who informed me that a friend’s mother had the same kind of car I was driving. When I asked him if her car had been reported stolen, the situation was in escalation mode until my passenger, a white male, got out of the car and idenitfied himself as my lawyer and asked the policeman for the exact reason he had stopped me. The officer made nice really fast, though not to me.
I’m sure that many in this communitiy have their own stories. Hell, even Michelle Bernard proclaimed when pressed by Chris Matthews "it’s a black thing, you wouldn’t understand." He didn’t. Though he got similar responses from both Eugene Robinson and Clarence Page. Our stories are met with either silence or denial.
I can find within me the laughter of my ancestors as they watch through me, idiots like Limbaugh,Beck and most of the so called 'news' team at fox. Lou Dobbs is a known factor on CNN and let us not forget Pat Buchanan. I am usually laughing my ass off watching these fools losing their minds. I find nothing funny in the lack of loud clear voices calling them out. Leaders in the black community have long ago been marginalized. When Al or Jesse show up eyes roll and most feel permission to dismiss what is said.
Race continues to be the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. It is at the core of America’s dsyfunction. Obama’s election did not, does not change this. If anything it mutes the dialogue that ought to happen, in fact must happen if we are to move past it .
I’m not holding my breath.
Now run and tell that.
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The Henry "Skip" Louis Gates Jr. arrest shows how little some features of the national racial landscape have changed over time. Prof. Lawrence Bobo writes: What Do You Call a Black Man with a Ph.D.?
Ain’t nothing post-racial about the United States of America.
I say this because my best friend, a well-known, middle-aged, affluent, black man, was arrested on his own front porch after showing his identification to a white police officer who was responding to a burglary call. Though the officer quickly determined that my friend was the rightful resident of the house and knew by then that there was no burglary in progress, he decided to place my friend in handcuffs, put him in the back of a police cruiser and have him fingerprinted and fully "processed," at our local police station.
This did not happen at night. It happened in the middle of the day. It did not happen to a previously unknown urban black male. It happened to internationally known, 58-year-old Henry Louis "Skip" Gates Jr. I am writing about this event because it is an outrage, because I want others to know that it is an outrage, and because, even now, I have not fully processed the meaning of it.
Here’s what I understand to have happened: The officer in my friend’s case was really motivated by a simmering cauldron of anger that my friend had not immediately complied with his initial command to step out of the house. In hindsight, that was the right thing to do since I think my friend could have been physically injured by this police officer (if not worse) had he, in fact, stepped out of his home before showing his ID. Black Americans recall all too well that Amadou Diallo reached for his identification in a public space when confronted by police and, 42 gun shots later, became the textbook case of deadly race-infected police bias.
Obama Criticizes Arrest of Harvard Professor.
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JackandJillPolitics has a great diary on education and assimilation in relationship to people of color: Town breaks it down....again...
It’s funny how some people mock non-whites for getting an education by claiming they are "acting white."
I have long held the belief that the "doing well in school = acting white" thing was started up by racist whites.
I think it’s interesting that most of the 80s era rappers were college students/college graduates and they all had on the HBCU T-shirts...but when Corporate America got their hands on rap you never heard a rapper again talk about black pride and you never saw an HBCU t-shirt on a rapper again.
I think it’s curious that conservatives tell blacks/hispanics they’re being discriminated against because they don’t have any education...but when the black/hispanic gets an education they tell them that education doesn’t mean anything.
I think it’s interesting that conservatives/GOP admonish hispanics for not knowing English and tell them they better learn English, no Spanish allowed...but when hispanics try to learn English, they are mocked.
Maybe the problem in this society isn’t education, because it really doesn’t matter if blacks and hispanics go to school and get an education because many whites will regard somebody like Palin, who went to 5 colleges in 6 years, has no command of the English language and is intellectually incurious as much more smarter and qualified than a black/hispanic summa cum laude graduate of an Ivy League school who continously strives to learn.
I suspect RayRay in the hood knows this. He doesn’t need a State of the Black Union to tell him what he already knows.
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Poor diets partially caused by Food Deserts are a huge issue in the black community. This a major reason why we at Black Kos celebrate stories where local farmers and urban growers are asked to sell food at churches: Black churches hope farmers markets change eating habits in a Chicago 'food desert'.
While farmers markets and garden parties might be associated more with upscale wine-and-cheese communities around Chicago, the wine-and-wafer crowds of North Lawndale and other neighborhoods are now getting in on the action, but more out of necessity than to be trendy.
This month, several churches on the city's South and West Sides have recruited local farmers and urban growers to peddle their produce at farmers markets, filling what organizers called a void in fresh fruit and vegetables in their communities.
Last week, Trinity United Church of Christ on the Far South Side unveiled a weekly farmers market in their church parking lot. On Saturday, Greater Galilee Missionary Baptist Church in North Lawndale will launch a similar open-air market on the West Side.
Trinity and others have planted seeds for a community garden as well.
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A small local issue reported on by a black blog starts an interesting discussion, on the role of the black press and it's relatioship with black politicians: The Black Press and black politicians
An irritated License Collector Michael McMillan called us last Thursday to offer a pedantic lecture on the role of the Black Press after reading last week’s Political EYE column, which reported and riffed on a State audit of the License Collector’s Office.
As we reported, the audit turned up a number of matters of concern, so perhaps McMillan’s time would be better spent literally minding his own business rather than providing philosophical background on ours. But we enjoy philosophy here, and Mike did raise some interesting points.
In his unsolicited volunteer lecture, Professor McMillan said when he was a student of African-American studies, he was taught the Black Press existed to defend the image and rights of minorities, which tend to be ignored or slighted in the mainstream press.
True that. We could take the good professor through last week’s paper and show evidence of this function of the Black Press at work throughout the edition.
Then why, Mike wanted to know, did we report critically on the State audit of his office when mainstream venues like the Post-Dispatch and the Beacon gave him a pass?
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Many here at Black Kos, have rightly trashed CNN "Black in America" series, but this is one subject that we will always support. Saving black marriages: Does it take a village?
From the outside, Johnny and Shanna Woodbury looked like the perfect couple. They had been married 13 years, owned multiple properties and were successful managers. They also had four beautiful children -- a son and a daughter fresh out of college they had prior to getting married and a 12-year-old daughter on the cheerleading team and an 8-year-old son on the honor roll.
Together they had built and moved into their 7,200-square-foot dream home in Prince George's County, Maryland, with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, two sunrooms and a basement. Both were Christians who regularly attended the New Samaritan Baptist Church.
But privately, the Woodburys' marriage was in turmoil.
"I love my husband" said Shanna Woodbury of their marriage. "But I feel so overworked and underappreciated. I work full-time like my husband, but if I don't maintain the domestic responsibilities of the house, nothing gets done. Added to that, I manage our rental properties and take care of everything for our kids, alone."
Her husband started to echo similar frustrations.
"I'm faithful to my wife, I give her my whole paycheck but I work the late shift and my job is demanding. When I come home, I don't need to hear her mouth -- I just need to watch my favorite football game in peace."
Shanna grows more overwhelmed, tempers flare and the two begin arguing more and listening less. Tension took over their home and their fighting began to take a toll on the rest of the family, resulting in disciplinary issues with the kids.
"I realized my family was dysfunctional," says Shanna Woodbury. "But we also knew that divorce was not an option."
The Woodburys knew they needed help. So a friend introduced them to Basic Training for Couples -- a class that had helped pull their friends' marriage back from the brink of divorce.
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Conservatives were against identy politics before they were for it, Harry Alford: The Conservative Al Sharpton
Some post-July 4th fireworks were on display at a Senate Environmental and Public Works Commitee hearing last week, chaired by Barbara Boxer. You could be forgiven for missing them, as they flew during the Sonia Sotomayor confirmation hearings. But the incident was equal parts comical and pathetic, and telling for what it says about the state of today's conservative movement.
Testifying was Harry Alford, president and CEO of an outfit called the National Black Chamber of Commerce, an organization which I had never heard of prior to last week, and which Alford runs with his wife. Alford was testifying against climate change legislation for reasons not dissimilar from those of most business lobbies which oppose climate change legislation. Alford is especially useful to the anti-climate change legislation lobby in that he brings a veneer of multiculturalism to the effort, as he claims to speak on behalf of black business owners. The NBCC's positions are identical to those espoused by the United States Chamber of Commerce (Alford sits on the group's Board of Directors), and it receives a hefty amount of money from a variety of businesses. There's nothing wrong with that, but it's important to recognize that the organization is distinguished solely by the presence of "Black" in its title.
In light of this background, it was strange to witness Alford's outraged reaction to Boxer's entering a statement from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People supportive of her legislation into the record. I'd prefer a world in which we could debate the merits of climate change legislation without discussing its effects on every imagineable ethnic group, but it was Alford's presence at the hearing as the self-appointed spokseman for black business owners that prompted a response from another African-American organization, and Boxer, good, racially-sensitive liberal that she is, was more than happy to play along in the identity politics game. Yet at the mere mention of another black group, Alford lost his cool. "Madam Chair, that is condescending to me," he intoned. "I'm the National Black Chamber of Commerce and you're trying to put up some other black group to pit against me."
Well, duh. If you go around Washington claiming to represent black business owners, what right do you have to complain about a Senator using a statement from another black organization to counter you? It's the logical counterstrike in the game of identity politics. "Your" blacks think this way? Well, "my" blacks think my way. The game can be played with any group, whether it be gays or Jews or Hispanics or women.
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Does Exxon speak for black Americans in the climate bill debate? Filling a Black Hole
Last week, National Black Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Harry Alford gave Sen. Barbara Boxer the business over their disagreements about the climate bill before her committee. In testimony before the Senate's Environment and Public Works Committee, Alford admitted that he spoke "not as an economist" and as "not a climate change expert," but as someone with "a deep understanding of small and minority-owned businesses." In other words, he knows black people. When Boxer waved an NAACP resolution supporting climate change action in Alford's face, he took offense, accusing Boxer of "racial"-izing the climate change debate, and asked pointedly: "Why are you doing the colored people's association's study with the black chamber of commerce?" Later, he added: "Let me speak for the African-American community, since I am African American."
The bickering over who speaks for black America on climate change was a distraction from the more important issue whether black people will have a voice in reshaping U.S. energy policy. To be fair, Boxer cited other reports before she name-dropped the NAACP with Alford. But she erred when she decided to hide behind the NAACP document. Boxer's move was the equivalent of a white person invoking a black friend in an argument with a black person to establish racial credibility. Indeed, ultimately, all the NAACP document did was resolve that the black organization would work with the National Wildlife Federation on this issue.
Alford called Boxer's act "condescending." But it was no less troubling than Alford’s testifying with the aid of a report produced by his white friends at CRA International, who prepared the "Impact on the Economy of the American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009" study, from which Alford quoted heavily.
As reported by Grist.org, Alford's NBCC has collected $350,000 from Exxon Mobil since 1998, and according to Boxer they financed the CRA study as well.
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We're glad that the media is at last confronting these birther madpeople, and not pretending they don't "mean" to be racist.
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With all the hope and joy South Africas hosting of the world cup of soccers brings, there is still the grinding poverty that breeds unfortunate stories like the following: Whispers of Steven Biko: South African Discontent Rising
Violence in South Africa's townships has spread as residents protest about what they say is a lack of basic services, such as water and housing.
Police have fired rubber bullets at demonstrators in Johannesburg, the Western Cape and the north-eastern region of Mpumalanga.
In Mpumalanga, there were reports of foreign-owned businesses being looted as foreigners sought police protection. More than 100 people have been arrested during the past week.
The rising tensions in the townships have revived memories of xenophobic attacks on foreigners last year in which more than 60 people died.
The latest protests over service delivery come less than 100 days after Jacob Zuma took office as president, following a resounding election victory for the governing African National Congress (ANC).
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Ghana Visit, Two Perspectives by ThirtyFiveUp
Harvard Scholar's Arrest: Racial Profiling? by Giles Goat Boy
Roland Martin, being real about the "Birthers" (Video)
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Bridging a Black & White Divide: Kudos to NWF and NAACP
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Kossacks: Tell Ignorant BLACKS and WHITES to STFU !
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