Buy It Now

Just a reminder to buy whatever you need so you can participate in the economic boycott November 2.

Show up.

MAKE NO PURCHASES NOV. 1-3, 2007.
November 2, 2007 National Blackout Day

WARREN BALLENTINE, 'THE PEOPLE'S ATTORNEY,' IS CALLING FOR ALL AFRICAN AMERICANS TO PARTICIPATE IN A NATIONAL BLACKOUT'

WHO: Warren Ballentine 'The People's Attorney' and radio 'Truth Fighter' is calling for a National Blackout throughout America, on Friday, November 2, 2007.

WHAT: Attorney Ballentine is calling for a National Blackout that is necessary for African Americans, and is long over due. Especially with all the present injustices that are being allowed and accepted in America right now. From the situation with Mychal Bell and the Jena 6, Genarlow Wilson, Megan Williams, and all of the nooses being hung all over America lately. Until we have federal legislation in place regarding these hate crimes, as African Americans, we need to band together to show our 'Economic Power' by refusing to spend ANY money that day from fast food restaurants to gas. More on Jena 6 at http://www.JENA6TV . com.

WHY: As African Americans we spend an estimated 715 billion dollars a year, and if we were to stop spending for one day that is 2 billion dollars that will not in the system. However, we ask that you don't make a mad dash to the stores days prior or on the days following. If the stores have a major increase in sales right before or right after the Blackout than we will not create the impact we are striving for.

WHEN & Friday, November 2, 2007

WHERE: Nationwide Blackout for ALL African Americans

Blackout 2 November 2007

Don't Spend ANY money — Show a sign of solidarity

Many people marched in Jena, LA, last month in support of the 6 young men unjustly charged with attempted murder for a school yard fight. There are many situations all over the nation that scream of injustice and unfair treatment of people in this country.
. . .

On Friday, November 2, 2007, Warren Ballentine, Reverend Al Sharpton and other civil rights leaders are calling for a national boycott. Black people alone spend 2 billion dollars a day in the United States and we are only approximately 12% of the population—2 billion dollars a day, lining the pockets of companies that have shown no interest in our interests. We ARE living in the new civil rights movement.

We cannot allow the march in Jena to be only an event. It MUST be a movement. In the 1950s, the bus boycott was only supposed to be for a few days or weeks. It ended up being over a year.

The goal was for fair treatment and bus integration. Our parents and grandparents sacrificed and showed that with faith and strength, they could show corporate America the power of the community and demanded fair treatment. As we know, those buses were integrated. This is not about color. This is about class. The middle class and poor people in this country are not treated as the Declaration of Independence says we should be treated. It states that 'all men are created equal'. Clearly the governing class of the United States disagrees with their document.

Join us on Friday, November 2, 2007 and don't spend ANY money. If you have to shop, do it the day before or the day after. If you need gas, get it the day before or the day after. We have to join together as a community. You may be thinking, it's only one day, what difference will it make? I had the same thought at first, but just think about it. If we all save our money that day, it WILL make a difference. That day may become a weekend. That weekend may become a week and that week a month. As we showed in the 1950s, we can make a difference if we do this together.

Show a sign of solidarity.

No Education for the Poor

The War on Poor People is also part of the American War on Black People. More than 40% of the nation's poor live in the South. The state with the greatest concentration of poor students is Louisiana, where 84% of public school students are poor; more than 60% of Florida's public schools are poor.

Where there are inequalities in education, of course inequalities in income and wealth follow. (The poor get poorer.)

How this country finances education is criminal. Criminal, I say. (There is a Judgment Day a-comin', and some people are going to get the shock of their lives is all Ima say about that.) Schools are financed by local and state taxes, which means that the accident of birth governs whether an American child receives an adequate education.

When there is concentrated poverty in the schools, it means that poor students have the least qualified, least experienced teachers, fewest counseling services (and certainly the greatest need for counseling services), least access to technology, and--this probably goes without saying--the highest drop-out rates.

Reform, reform, reform. There is a solid affirmative action program in place for rich white kids, with all the children of alumni admissions policies and so on. Let us now turn our attention to people in need.

[Stats from today's News & Notes on NPR]

UPDATE: More on this from Education Week:

More than half of public schoolchildren in the U.S. South now come from low-income families, according to a new report, which predicts that the nation as a whole could reach the same demographic milestone within a decade if current trends persist.

“What these figures are beginning to tell us is that we’re no longer talking about a small slice of the population when we talk about low-income students,” said Steve T. Suitts, the author of the report, which was released today by the Southern Education Foundation, an Atlanta-based group. “We’re talking in the South about a majority of students and that does have profound implications and challenges for schools.”

According to the report, the South, for the first time in at least 40 years, is the only region in the nation where low-income children constitute a majority of public school students. Overall, the study found that in the 2006-07 school year, 54 percent of students in 15 Southern states examined came from families poor enough to qualify for the federal free and reduced-price lunch program. Under the guidelines for that program, families cannot earn more than 185 percent of the federal poverty threshold—about $31,765 a year for a family of three—to participate.

Whiteness Is Inhuman

. . .The trauma of racism is, for the racist and the victim, the severe fragmentation of the self, and has always seemed to me a cause (not a symptom) of psychosis--strangely of no interest to psychiatry. Ahab, then, is navigating between an idea of civilization that he renounces and an idea of savagery he must annihilate, because the two cannot co-exist. The former is based on the latter. What is terrible in its complexity is that the idea of savagery is not the missionary one: it is white racial ideology that is savage and if, indeed, a white, nineteenth-century American male took on not abolition, not the amelioration of racist institutions or their laws, but the very concept of whiteness as an inhuman idea, he would be very alone, very desperate, and very doomed. Madness would be the only appropriate description of such audacity. . . .
. . . I would not like to be understood to argue that Melville was engaged in some simple and simple-minded black/white didacticism, or that he was satanizing white people. Nothing like that. What I am suggesting is that he was overwhelmed by the philosophical and metaphysical inconsistencies of an extraordinary and unprecedented idea that had its fullest manifestation in his own time in his own country, and that that idea was the successful assertion of whiteness as an ideology.

--from "On Herman Melville" by Toni Morrison in Black on White: Black Writers on What It Means to Be White

Genarlow Wilson Did Not Create His Own Reality

Genarlow Wilson is free. For the first time in years, he can get up in the middle of the night and make his way in the dark to the refrigerator and get himself a snack. He can go outside whenever he wants. He can sleep all day. He can make choices about what to do every minute of the day. The way we all do. He is free.

Maybe some of you have heard of this New Agey spirituality based on the Create Your Own Reality concept. It is what it sounds like: no matter how horrifying your circumstances, whether you are an Ethiopian orphan or a child starving in Darfur, your soul picked them from the vast array of choices on the menu at the Heavenly Diner. You coulda had a V-8, but no, you wanted to experience suffering in Africa. To build your character. To enlighten your understanding.

Stretches all credulity, really. Such a convenient belief system, in that it absolves one of the need for compassion and the moral imperative to speak and act for those who cannot do so for themselves. It is probably no accident that the Create Your Own Reality people also preach the Gospel of Greed Prosperity. (It goes without saying that the prosperity is for themselves. It's interesting, because although so many of the Create Your Own Reality folks align themselves with liberal politics, their beliefs and actions align with the We Hate Poor People party.)

Grossly Disproportionate

Yobachi at BlackPerspective.net noted that Genarlow Wilson is to be released, as the Georgia Supreme Court has deemed his prison sentence (for engaging in consensual oral sex) "cruel and unusual punishment":

The Georgia Supreme Court on Friday ordered the release of Genarlow Wilson, the Douglas County teenager who has been serving a controversial 10-year sentence for consensual oral sex.

The court's 4-3 decision upholds a Monroe County judge's ruling that the sentence constituted cruel and unusual punishment under both the Georgia and U.S. constitutions.

The majority opinion said the sentence appeared to be "grossly disproportionate" to the teenager's crime and noted that it was out of step with current law.

We Are All One

"Every man is our brother, and every man’s burden is our own. Where poverty exists, all are poorer. Where hate flourishes, all are corrupted. Where injustice reins, all are unequal."

That's Whitney Young, y'all.

Put Away Your Wallet

Stock up. There's an economic boycott coming:

ATLANTA -- Civil rights leaders called Tuesday for a march on the Justice Department and an economic boycott next month because they believe the federal government has been sluggish in dealing with hate crimes.

They called for Americans not to spend any money Nov. 2 as an economic boycott of the federal government's handling of hate crimes. And they announced initial plans for a Nov. 16 march on Justice Department headquarters in Washington.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, Martin Luther King III and other activists at a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Atlanta cited the uproar in Jena, La., surrounding three white teens accused of hanging nooses outside a school and the six black teens charged in the beating of a white student. Five were initially charged with attempted murder, but that charge was reduced.

The civil rights leaders believe the federal government should prosecute the noose hanging as a hate crime. Louisiana authorities have said there is no state law under which they could prosecute the students suspected of hanging the nooses.

"The Justice Department is missing in action," King said.

A spokesman for the Justice Department, Erik Ablin, said in an e-mail message that federal, state and local officials are aggressively investigating numerous noose hanging reports around the country, as well as other incidents involving racial or religious threats.

I'm all for it. Show the power. If nothing else, it will be good for legislators and companies to see how many people really are paying attention. November 2. Mark it on the calendar.

Ring the Alarm!

. . . fire in the house! in the immortal words of (heheheheheh) Christina Aguilera et al.

. . .didja hear my gasp of disbelief? I was skimming the NYT headlines, and each has a little excerpt to entice you into actually reading the article. This paragraph is simply breath-taking:

For a presidency still haunted by memories of Hurricane Katrina, the forceful round-the-clock response was a political no-brainer — the “anti-Katrina,” in the words of Peter Wehner, a former domestic policy adviser to Mr. Bush.

The unmitigated gall! The effrontery! The baldfaced chutzpah! The, the, the. . .excuse me while I hyperventilate.

How could anyone possessing the capacity to make meaning out of print pass this by unnoticed?

I will spell it out, however, because that is how I do: THERE IS A STRONG RESPONSE TO THE FIRE EMERGENCY BECAUSE THEM BE RICH WHITE PEOPLE.

If the fires were taking place in Richmond or in Oakland (not the Here There Be White People Hills, I mean the real Oakland), let's say, or in Compton, or in some parts of Long Beach (not Belmont Shores), they would be permitted to burn merrily and in fact, there might be a wienie and marshmallow roast.

Cowardly Acts Through the Mail

Yet another noose:

The principal of Canarsie High School received a noose along with a racially charged letter yesterday, the police said. The package was delivered to the school over the weekend and opened yesterday morning.

The principal, Tyona Washington, who is black, is in her first year at the school, which is in Brooklyn.

The hate crimes unit of the Police Department is investigating, but the police said yesterday that there were no suspects.

Florida on the March for Marvin Lee Anderson

Remember Martin Lee Anderson, the young man who died at the hands of the guards (who were later acquitted)?

Get your calendars out. March on Tuesday in Tallahassee. If there were any way I could go!

The Florida State Conference NAACP is mobilizing thousands of people from across the state and nation to support the "Justice for Martin Lee Anderson" march and rally Tuesday to demand justice in the death of Anderson, a black 14-year-old, who was killed while in the custody of the Bay County Sheriff’s Department Boot Camp in January 2006.

The march begins at 11:00 am Tuesday at the Tallahassee Civic Center and will proceed to the Federal Courthouse.

Who's the Idiot?

Back to My Little Pony, the racial achievement gap:

It appears to be that time once more for the race and IQ debate to rear its foolish head by dint of something said or published by a person of purportedly high intelligence.

We were last here in 1994, with the release of "The Bell Curve," in which Charles Murray, a historian, and Richard Hernstein, a behavioral psychologist, argued that black people, on the whole, are of lower intelligence than whites as a whole.

A firestorm erupted, with loads of dissenters and critics on one side and loads of defenders and believers on the other. Murray swam through the turbulence, laughing all the way to the bank as the book climbed the bestseller lists. . . .

Now comes the chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a scientific research facility in New York, telling a British audience that he sees a dire future for Africans because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours -- whereas all the testing says not really.”

If you are using a measurement tool, and the results look screwy time and time again, might one not question the accuracy of the measurement tool and therefore investigate the process whereby it is created and the methodology used in the measuring and a whole host of other related factors?

Let's not linger, though, there is more to see. Sex, baby! Yeah! Because the good Dr. Watson (most famous perhaps for being one of those who discovered the DNA molecule) also fantasizes that the Black people be getting they groove on:

Hunt-Grubbe also reports that Watson has suggested a link between skin colour and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos. In 2000 Watson shocked an audience at the University of California, Berkeley, when he advanced his theory about a link between skin color and sex drive. His lecture, complete with slides of bikini-clad women, argued that extracts of melanin — which give skin its color — had been found to boost subjects' sex drive.

Don't take it personally; although Watson may seem racist at first glance, a more thorough examination reveals he is batshit crazy.

Among the screws that are not only loose, but rolling around freely looking for a brain to which to attach in the echoing dark cavern of his haid are his fantasies of creating a Watson World in which all the ladies please his palate:

He has also suggested that beauty could be genetically engineered, saying "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."

In this best of all possible worlds (in the immortal words of Leibniz and then Voltaire), there are no--gasp!--gays:

He has been quoted in The Sunday Telegraph as stating: "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her."

And by the way? Fuck the fat people, too:

On the issue of obesity, Watson has also been quoted as saying: "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."

UPDATE: From the 10/26/07 NYT:

James D. Watson, the eminent biologist who ignited an uproar last week with remarks about the intelligence of people of African descent, retired yesterday as chancellor of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory on Long Island, and from its board.

Suppressing the Black Vote

Here is an appeal from ColorofChange.org:

NO on Hans von Spakovsky

Demand the Senate take a stand against voter suppression

Hans von Spakovsky has made a career out of suppressing the vote of minorities.

Now Bush wants von Spakovsky to be confirmed for a seat on the Federal Election Commission (FEC), the agency in charge of enforcing election finance laws. It's not a surprise that most Republicans support his nomination. But while Democrats talk about supporting voting rights, most of them are ready to let him through without a fight.

Please join us below in calling on your senators to oppose von Spakovsky's confirmation and to send a strong statement that voter suppression will not be tolerated and that those who engage in voter suppression have no place in the electoral system.

http://www.colorofchange.org/vonspak/?id=2357-346645

The Meaninglessness of Race

The justification for making distinctions--at least the distinctions pulled over our eyes in this country-- is economic oppression. (That is my opinion. And not just mine.) But the debate goes on:

Ever since scientists discovered “the secret of life” embedded in our DNA a half century ago, the study of human genes has sparked debate about the nature of race. The question seemed to be settled in the early 1970s when biologist Richard Lewontin compared variations in genes within and among different population groups. His conclusion, that most human genetic variation did not fall along racial lines, was widely accepted. At the molecular level, human beings are more alike than different. Repeat experiments confirmed this finding, and many experts embraced the knowledge that the racial categories that have long divided people and justified racist oppression represented social and political beliefs rather than biological truths.

But the notion that race is real as a biological fact did not die. Even after research teams who identified and sequenced all 20,000-25,000 genes as part of the historic Human Genome Project declared in 2000 that race was not a valid scientific concept, the counterclaim resurfaced.

No Justice for Martin Lee Anderson

Maybe you remember this:

Martin Lee Anderson, 14, died Jan. 5, hours after arriving at a juvenile boot camp for stealing his grandmother's car and violating probation. A local coroner says sickle cell trait, not an altercation with boot camp guards, killed Anderson. But an eerily silent surveillance video shows Bay County deputies restraining, kicking and punching the boy, who at times appeared limp and unable to comply. The results of a second autopsy remain secret, but at least one coroner involved says the youth did not die of sickle cell, or any other natural causes.

Now those responsible for Martin Lee Anderson's death have been acquitted:

An uneasy sense of dèjá vu swept over Florida last week after an all-white jury acquitted seven juvenile boot camp guards and a nurse charged with aggravated manslaughter in the death of a black teen last year.

First of all, stealing your grandmother's car is joyriding, and when a white kid does it, particularly a white kid from one of those rolling green hill communities, the cops take him home and hand him over to the parents with a warning. So we can all agree that the original offense was an example of disproportionate sentencing. And then, and then, a death sentence.

Today I am wearing black for Martin Lee Anderson. I am wearing black for Martin Lee Anderson, and for Mychal Bell, who remains in custody, and I am wearing black for all those who have been unjustly imprisoned in this country of outrageous injustice.

[thanks to Raven for the link]

UPDATE: More on this at blackamericaweb.com]

Make Segregation Equal?

I understand it. Neighborhood schools have a lot to recommend them. You can walk to school; there's a sense of community; your children and their friends live close to each other. Desegregation may mean traveling an inconvenient distance to school, and it may mean social isolation for children after school, and it brings a host of other problems. But, still.

Schools with a majority nonwhite student population are going to have less money, because these are schools on the wrong side of the street from the gated communities and gently rolling green hills and high property values. These schools usually will not be staffed by the most experienced administrators and teachers. They may not have all the supplies they need, nor enough books, nor computers. The way schools are funded makes sure of this, in this land of I Got Mine and You Can't Have Any (so short-sighted).

Yes, all schools should teach the same material, be equally rigorous, provide the same supplies, offer the same opportunities. They should.

But even if they did, even if schools truly were separate but equal, that would still be a terrible world in which to live. Wouldn't it mean that we gave up?

The Possibility of Reform

Would Ashley Jones have received a life sentence if she were white?

The United States wants to reserve the right to lock children up. Forever.

BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — In December, the United Nations took up a resolution calling for the abolition of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for children and young teenagers. The vote was 185 to 1, with the United States the lone dissenter.

Indeed, the United States stands alone in the world in convicting young adolescents as adults and sentencing them to live out their lives in prison. According to a new report, there are 73 Americans serving such sentences for crimes they committed at 13 or 14.

Which is odd for a nation of people who purport to believe in redemption. But the people who are the loudest in calling for retribution and punishment, the people who are least willing to show mercy, the people who decry compassion as weakness, these are the people who say they believe in the Bible, in Jesus, in the New Testament. And the sole theme of the New Testament is redemption and salvation. That's it.

Par-TAY!

K. the Brilliant alerted me to the ghetto fabulous party phenomenon:

In October of 2006, law students at the University of Texas-Austin held a “Ghetto Fabulous” party, at which partygoers carried bottles of malt liquor and wore Afro wigs, necklaces with large medallions, and name tags with traditionally black and Latino names such as “Tanika” and “Jesus.” Just a couple of months ago, in January of 2007, white students at Tarleton State University in Texas sponsored a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day party, at which partygoers came dressed in “ghetto” gear, flashed gang signs, ate fried chicken and ribs, and drank malt liquor from bottles. One woman even dressed as Aunt Jemina, red handkerchief in her hair and syrup bottle in hand. For those readers who may view such events as limited only to the South, just a few days later, white students at the University of Connecticut School of Law held a “Bullets and Bubbly” party that featured do-rags, gang signs, gold teeth, and malt liquor.

I don't have much to do with college parties, you know. If you want to check'em out, here's a list from Uncommon Misconceptions:

• Ghetto Fabulous Party, Cornell University, March ‘04
• Ghetto Fabulous Party, Univ. of Texas Law School, September ‘06
• Tacos and Tequila Party, University of Illinois, 10/5/06
• Halloween in the ’Hood’ Party, Johns Hopkins University, 10/28/06
• Gangsta Party, Clemson University, 1/14/07
• Martin Luther King Party, Tarleton State College, 1/15/07
• Martin Luther King Party, University of Arizona, 1/15/07
• Bullets and Bubbly Party, U. Conn. Law School, ~1/20/07
• South of the Border Party, University of Santa Clara, 1/29/07
• South of the Border Party, University of Delaware, 5/5/07

Although not a new phenomenon, it seems that over the last year "ghetto," "gangsta," "south of the border" and "taco and tequila" parties have become college chic and cool. Parties at more than a dozen colleges and universities received national coverage in the past year, with countless others going unnoticed save for the pictures posted to sundry websites. It is tempting to interpret such events as clichéd racist expressions. They are, after all, contemporary minstrel theaters that allow middle- and upper-class white Americans to cross moral and social boundaries by racial cross-dressing. But such easy explanations keep us from fully appreciating the circumstances on today's college campus that make minstrel parties pleasing and powerful for so many.

If there is a sensibility to which I have an exceedingly strong aversion, it is that of certain middle-to-upper-class whites. This sensibility is characterized by entitlement, by self-satisfaction, by a preening adoration of self that is nauseating. Its fascination with itself is endless, and it finds even in its flaws an unending source of gratification, boasting of its ignorance and charmed by its egotism. It's the sensibility of people who have never grown up. They got stuck, mentally and morally, in toddlerhood. Which explains the aggressive lack of compassion and empathy, and the failure to understand why what they do is reprehensible.

Oh, it all fits. Why did the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee boycott the hearing on the Jena 6? Why did the Republican presidential candidates pull an FTA on Tavis Smiley? Because they refuse to admit there are other people in the world. But I digress.

In many respects, ghetto-fabulous parties are the culmination of conservative politics on college campuses. They reflect the ongoing insecurities of whiteness in the wake of the civil rights movement and the supposed prominence of multiculturalism and political correctness.

I am sick unto death of the term "politically correct." As far as I am concerned, it is a fabrication of small-minded bigots. What the bigots protest is the curtailing of their freedom to be disrespectful without ceasing to everyone they deem inferior, and that includes all women and all non-white people. Why is it so difficult to treat all people with respect? That was a rhetorical question, but I will answer it: it is difficult, nay, it is impossible, to treat respectfully people for whom you have contempt, particularly when the basis of your contempt is that they are not like you. (No matter that we did not none of us choose to have male bodies or female bodies, we did not none of us choose our skin color nor our geography nor our social class, we all just ended up who we are and where we at.)

Indeed, ghetto-fab parties are part of a broader reactionary movement that believes whiteness and the ivory tower are being imperiled by political correctness, radical professors and "minority rights." Pushing against these perceived evils, conservative students have organized political theatrics on campuses, holding "affirmative-action bake sales" and offering "white-only" scholarships. They have in essence created a culture today in which those with power think of themselves as victims and those without become targets for violence.

The plight of the privileged white person is sorry indeed.

"Decrying the ghetto party as 'modern-day minstrelsy' is surely an expression of righteous indignation, but it is only the beginning of the story rather than the end," argues Dr. Jared Sexton, an assistant professor in African American Studies at UC Irvine. "The persistent challenge is to understand why the perverse pleasure of cross-racial caricature and its disavowed currents of mockery, ridicule, envy and hatred are so powerfully attractive to its participants-participants who, as a rule, rely on the dynamics of racial segregation that have produced the ghetto for the very form and substance of the most public and the most intimate aspects of their social lives."

The answer is obvious:

To be sure, White supremacy and its institutional supports no longer enjoy secure futures. . . .

Says Bernestine Singley, ". . . the hearts and minds displayed in these staged acts of racial assault reveal a breathtaking, even heartbreaking, wall of denial, contempt, and cowardice."

Contempt and cowardice sums it up, I think. The same people strutting around at the ghetto fabulous parties? They are the ones who clutch their purses when a Black man walks by, who are afraid to go into Black neighborhoods, who get twitchy if they are not in the majority at all times. They are right to be scared. The world, it is a-changin'.

Shame

Somebody got in trouble!

WASHINGTON October 16, 2007, 3:06 p.m. ET · Democratic lawmakers denounced federal authorities Tuesday for not intervening in the Jena Six case, citing racist noose-hanging incidents far beyond the small Louisiana town where a school attack garnered national attention.

. . . Democratic lawmakers, many of them black, blasted federal authorities for staying out of the local prosecutor's case against the six, particularly that of Mychal Bell, who is currently in jail after a judge decided he violated the terms of his probation for a previous conviction.

"Shame on you," Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, said to Justice Department officials, directing most of her fury at Donald Washington, the U.S. attorney for Louisiana's western district — and the first black person to hold that position.

"As a parent, I'm on the verge of tears," Jackson Lee said.

"Why didn't you intervene?" she asked repeatedly, raising her voice and jabbing her finger in the air as some in the audience began to applaud.

Committee chairman John Conyers, D-Mich., called for quiet before Washington spoke.

"I was also offended, I too am an African-American," Washington told the panel. "I did intervene, I did engage the district attorney. At the end of the day, there are only certain things that the United States attorney can do."

Following that exchange, Conyers pointed out he had invited the local district attorney, Reed Walters, to testify, but he declined. At that, some in the audience yelled out, "subpoena him!"

Better late than never. I'm looking forward to what happens next. Will Reed Walters be subpoenaed?

And you know there is always one:

The senior Republican on the panel, Lamar Smith of Texas, said, "more than anything what we need is an effort to reduce racial tension... What we do not need is stoking racial resentment."

There's no context here, so it's possible Lamar Smith's remark was not so awful as it appears at first listen. It does sound as if he is making an accusation, and as if he is trying to shame people into backing down, and even minimizing the seriousness of what is happening. "What we do not need is stoking racial resentment." This implies that the racial resentment ("Those angry Black people!") is an everboiling pot just looking for an excuse to blow.

One out of Three

1. the right to vote
2. civic equality
3. the education of youth according to ability

Look Inward

Congress is looking at the Jena 6 matter:

The House Judiciary Committee has scheduled a hearing on the Jena Six case Tuesday morning, less than a week after a youth at the center of the controversy was locked up again.

Which is all to the good. Not only to prevent these young men from becoming just another set of stats, but--is this too much to hope--to keep the struggle for justice in the forefront of our minds.

Even as I write this, I feel a little disheartened, not the least because in my heart I do accuse the liberals (or progressives, if that is the term you prefer) of shying away from social justice issues having to do with race. Or not shying away, exactly, but refusing to buckle in for the long ride. Oh, they will hitchhike here and there on a cause, especially if it allows them to castigate the conservatives (not that there's anything wrong with that, and I like to have me my fun, too) or if it allows them to congratulate themselves for their open-mindedness, as if they are somehow virtuous for not being as racist as the conservatives are.

dnA at Too Sense puts it bluntly:

Most white people don't care about what they see as "black" problems. Not even liberal white people.

Which was followed up by commenter Francis L. Holland:

For some reason, white are willing to believe that they are partly at fault for the systematic war on Iraq, but they are not willing to believe that they are partly at fault for the systematic war on Black people here at home. We pose the triple threat threat that they, once having embraced fairness here in the United States - they may have to integrate with us; they may have to share power with us; and they may have to share economic resources with us.

All whites benefit from the systematically racist workings of the way we live in America. I just saw A Lesson Before Dying. A little boy is looking at a globe and asks his teacher if there are white people in Yugoslavia. The teacher says no. The boy asks, "Who does all the work?" Where does the wealth of this country come from? Who benefits. Race is all about economics.

When he was young, W.E.B. Du Bois (so generously and charitably) believed that racism came from ignorance, but later in life believed that "material relationships masked themselves to the guise of race relationships."

We are responsible for what we know. Good intentions are not enough. Refraining from behaving in an overtly racist and discriminatory manner does not absolve one from responsibility. Good God, there is a war on Black people in this country. But it is a home war, it's been going on for so long, it's soooooooooooooo boring. Can we talk about Iraq instead? But oh God, the Black people. . .why should I feel guilty?

Guilt serves a beautiful purpose, you know. It is an indication that all is not well in the soul. You should feel guilty because you benefit from the sufferings of others. You will stop feeling guilty when you take some kind of action--when you refuse to countenance racist jokes, when you educate yourself about what this country has done and is still doing to Black people, when you examine every corner of your soul and scrub it clean, when you stop saying--when you stop thinking--things like, "What do they want, anyway?" or "So I got on this bus, and it was full of Black guys" or "I just never know what to say to them."

What used to be called "the Negro problem" is never going to go away. Pick a side. (If you say nothing, if you do nothing, you have picked your side.) (Although the problem, as how I look at it, is a white problem. It is a white problem with looking inward, with having integrity, with facing the truth, with accepting guilt and responsibility and making reparation and changing how we live and think and behave in this country. What is happening is evil, and those who stand by and let it happen are as bad as the perpetrators.)

UPDATE: I keep thinking about this. I don't think I said what I really wanted to say, which is that American whites who do not wish to support the current oppressive racist structure of how we live must first figure out how to recognize that they are part of the oppression, then identify what their role is, and then somehow extricate themselves as much as possible, at least untangle their thoughts from the dominating racism, and only then is it possible to begin any kind of positive action. Applying rigorous honesty the whole time, and being willing to come face to face with some ugly and then keep going.

Business as Usual

Mychal Bell has been sentenced and returned to custody on charges stemming from offenses that occurred prior to the Justin Barker matter:

NEW ORLEANS -- A black teenager whose prosecution in the beating of a white classmate drew thousands to Louisiana for a civil rights demonstration is back in jail, but a prosecutor said Friday the sentence has nothing to do with the racially charged case.

Mychal Bell, 17, was unexpectedly sent back to prison on Thursday after going to juvenile court in central Louisiana's LaSalle Parish for what he expected to be a routine hearing, Carol Powell Lexing, one of his attorneys said.

Instead, state District Judge J.P. Mauffrey Jr. decided Bell had violated probation and sentenced him to 18 months in jail on two counts of simple battery and two counts of criminal destruction of property, Lexing said.

Some of you know that I used to be a probation officer. Long ago. It was a period of short duration, but I was there long enough to understand and become sickened by the racist workings of the criminal injustice system--and that is in California, where whites settle themselves comfortably into a wide-eyed "Who, us? We're not racists!" attitude and even get a little huffy when you try to explain that even if a white person intends no racism, there may be a little stain lurking, and that the white person certainly is privileged in this land of ours. I served in both the adult and juvenile courts.

With that background knowledge, I can tell you a couple of things about what is happening with Mychal Bell, even not knowing him or the particulars of his case:

1. "simple battery" could be as insignificant as a shoving match
2. apply the same reasoning to "criminal destruction of property"
3. 18 months seems an excessive sentence
4. what is absolutely criminal is that no one seems to have explained what is going on to his parents:

“He’s locked up again,” Marcus Jones said of his 17-year-old son. “No bail has been set or nothing. He’s a young man who’s been thrown in jail again and again, and he just has to take it.”

There's no bail once a defendant has been sentenced; bail is only an alternative to remaining in custody before the trial and final disposition of a criminal offense.

It's not clear from this whether Bell is in jail or whether he is housed at a juvenile detention center. For his sake, I hope the latter.

I don't know the nature of the original offense that resulted in Mychal Bell receiving probation. I don't know the nature of the probation violations. There are some people who are simply always in the wrong place at the wrong time, and he may be one of those. It's almost impossible to obtain the facts, as juvenile court records are not available to the public.

I do very much suspect that the D.A. and judge are highly motivated to place Mychal Bell in custody, and this may have been the perfect opportunity. The protesters have all gone home. Even bloggers who once called for justice for the Jena 6 are now re-thinking their earlier stance and repenting of their fervor. (Not me. I adhere to the "Enough is enough" doctrine. IT DOES NOT MATTER WHETHER THESE YOUNG MEN WERE ANGELS OR NOT. WHAT MATTERS IS THE DISPROPORTIONATE SENTENCING BETWEEN WHITE AND BLACK DEFENDANTS IN THIS COUNTRY.)

Education Requires Integration

Or at least it should.

School integration is good for everybody:

Wells’s [Amy Stuart Wells, of Columbia University's Teachers College --ed.] brief primarily focuses on the long-term benefits of school integration. She cites social science data that shows integrated schools have a strong, positive effect on students’ racial attitudes and ability to interact with others in multiracial settings. The data show that minority students receive long-term benefits from integrated schools: they tend to move into more racially integrated settings in their lives and careers; they experience greater social mobility; they have higher occupational aspirations; and they develop intergroup skills that benefit both the graduates and their employers.

At the same time, research shows that white students who attend racially integrated schools have fewer racial stereotypes and prejudices, even controlling for other relevant social factors. Not only do integrated schools help the life chances of minority students, they also lessen the discrimination they face in society. Furthermore, Wells presents research showing that schools are often the only place that children are exposed to the multicultural experiences that lead to these benefits.

But there is so much opposition:

MILTON, Mass. -- Last spring, town officials in this affluent Boston suburb changed the elementary-school assignments for 38 streets -- and sparked outrage. Some white families had been reassigned to Tucker, a mostly black school which has historically had Milton's lowest test scores.

Among those reassigned is Kevin Keating, a white parent who is talking to lawyers about going to court to reverse the plan. I "just don't feel good putting [my son] in an inferior school," he says. His ammunition: the U.S. Supreme Court's June ruling that consideration of race in school assignments is unconstitutional.

Some work for integration in an attempt to reduce the racial achievement gap in test scores:

Although the push to integrate public schools is often associated with the civil-rights movement, these days many school administrators want to integrate schools for a more practical reason: to raise test scores. Studies show black and other minority students tend to perform better academically when they learn alongside white classmates. Districts face the threat of losing government funds if school test scores fail to meet a certain threshold.

Even though closing the achievement gap is ostensibly a significant goal of the No Test Publisher Child Left Behind legislation, really, are we surprised that to learn that

the Bush administration and various organizations have filed briefs opposing the integration policies.

The real issue is that school segregation is a basic human rights violation:

[According to a UN Human Rights Commission report] the state of segregation in U.S. schools may violate an international human rights treaty to which the United States is a signatory.

Some News, and Various Updates

Gallaudet Attack:

An investigation is continuing to determine whether a recent attack on a black student at the Model Secondary School for the Deaf at Gallaudet University in Washington, D.C., was a hate crime.

The Sept. 29 incident began in the dorms of the secondary school on the university’s campus. According to D.C. police, seven students -- six whites and one black -- held down a black student and wrote “KKK” and drew swastikas on his body with a marker.

Genarlow Wilson: I've been looking for news. I'll keep looking.
Jena 6: More here. And here.
Nooses: Nooses everywhere you look, apparently. There was a protest at Columbia about the noose on the Black professor's office door. Also, "a white Queens woman was arrested recently for throwing a noose around a tree and threatening to hang her black neighbor’s children from it."
Pleajhia Mervin: The security guard calls the victim a liar, then denies he is racist by saying, "I don't see color, I see people." [from Electronic Village] I have many thoughts, but will summarize: 1. Thank God for the witness who got the video. 2. Everyone sees color.

Not Way Down South, So Very Far Away

Yet another noose incident:

A hangman's noose was left dangling on the door of a black professor's office at Columbia University Teachers College on Tuesday, triggering a hate-crime investigation and drawing parallels to the "Jena Six" controversy.

[via Ask This Black Woman]

Be Scared

Also under the category of "I'm not racist, but--" is the Fear of Black Men:

Like many other black men, James says unspoken rules limit how they interact in predominantly white workplaces. In some cases, they must dress more formally than their co-workers, speak softly, or generally comport themselves in unaggressive ways to counteract stereotypes that paint black men as unintelligent, violent, and dangerous. These biases are based on long-held beliefs about black masculinity and sexuality that grew out of this country's history of slavery and segregation.

Who Shows Up

Remember Pleajhia Mervin, the high school student and birthday cake offender? She is facing criminal charges, while the security guard who broke her wrist is on paid leave. (And Pleajhia has been expelled from school. Probably because she is Black, I'm just going out on a limb here, because of that one federal study: "No other ethnic group is disciplined at such a high rate, the federal data show. . . Yet black students are no more likely to misbehave than other students from the same social and economic environments, research studies have found.")

The Reverend is on the scene. As well someone needs to be. Do not criticize the Reverend to me unless you are willing to quit your job and be Johnny on the Spot whenever an injustice of this nature occurs.

[Followed the link at BlackPerspective.net More here at Electronic Village about the 9/30 protest.]

Somebody's Ugly Is Showing

Courtesy of K. the Brilliant, who sent this story along, I'd like to dedicate this next song to the staffers at Glamour, who issued a Glamour Don't decree banning certain ethnic "political" hairstyles:

Early this summer, the junior-level editor accepted an invitation to speak to a group of women about corporate fashion at New York City law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton.

During the presentation the editor said that “political” hairstyles such as Afros and dreadlocks are a “Glamour don’t.” Several of the African American women in the audience took offense. Since then, the story—which was first reported in the August issue of American Lawyer—has been circulated in the form of a chain e-mail, a Glamour spokesperson says. The incident even led to a segment on NPR.

Editor-in-chief Cindi Lieve is trying to do damage control. She would do damage control, but all you people who are accusing Glamour of racism (Racism! The idea! All women are beautiful here at Glamour! Well, if they are glamorous, of course, and if they are over 5'10", weigh less than 110, are of a preternaturally youthful mien, and yet have fairly big boobs for their frail yet hyperathletic frames--that's just the start, though, because then they have to read our ads, buy the products, and use them religiously. Oh, and also? They need to follow our fashion advice or they will look like frumpy matrons or 7-11 hos or dirty hippies or radical militants, and nothing is less hot beautiful, and sure, even women who are Black can be beautiful, but just try to look as little Black as possible. . .) are getting in her way.

Because they at Glamour are NOT RACIST! And they will be the first to tell you how NOT RACIST they are!

“These are deep, really personal issues for a lot of women, so it doesn't surprise me at all that this discussion has had legs,” Leive wrote in an e-mail to Folio:. “Ironically, they're the sorts of issues we cover all the time in Glamour, so that's what we've decided to do here: hold a forum to get well-known women—and our own readers—talking about issues of beauty, identity and race, and then run the results in the magazine.”

Oh, Glamour ladies. You are transparent, and your insides are ugly.

We Are All Accountable for Our Actions

Even Jena 6 Reed Walters.

From Colorofchang.org, one of the groups that helped people mobilize for the Jena 6 rally, a way we can protest Reed Walters' abuse of power:

In a clear case of prosecutorial misconduct, Reed Walters has refused to protect the rights of Jena's Black population and has turned the police and courts into instruments of intimidation and oppression. It's time for everyone outraged by his actions to demand that the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board investigate him immediately.

Anyone can file a complaint against any attorney in Louisiana simply by sending a letter to the Disciplinary Board. It's easy as following the steps below:

1. Download the letter (you can preview it below), here.
2. Open it and replace text in red with your information (and change as you wish).
3. Print the letter, sign it, and place in a stamped envelope.
4. Mail it to the Office of Disciplinary Council at the address listed on the letter.
5. Email us at walterscomplaint@colorofchange.org so we can keep track of how many complaints have been sent.

Preview of Microsoft Word Document. You can download the actual document, here. Your name
Your address
City, State, Zip
Phone Number

Today's Date

Office of Disciplinary Counsel
4000 S. Sherwood Forest Blvd., Suite 607
Baton Rouge, LA, 70816
(225) 293-3900

To Whom It May Concern:

I am writing to request an investigation into the conduct of LaSalle Parish District Attorney Reed Walters over the last year with regards to several incidents, culminating with the prosecution of Mychal Bell, Robert Bailey, Bryant Purvis, Theo Shaw, Carwin Jones, and an unidentified minor. I am concerned that DA Walters has selectively and aggressively used his prosecutorial discretion in several cases over the last year and I believe he is unable to be an effective and impartial advocate for justice in LaSalle Parish.

In a statement published in a New York Times op-ed on September 26, 2007 that now appears on the Louisiana District Attorney Association website, Walters describes his role as District Attorney as one where he has to "...match the facts [of a case] to any applicable laws and seek justice for those who have been harmed. " What Walters ignores in this definition is the tremendous latitude prosecutors have to raise, lower, or dismiss charges as they see fit, under the doctrine of prosecutorial discretion. It has become clear that when Reed Walters is making decisions, white perpetrators in Jena receive a completely different kind of discretion than black ones.

When it came to prosecuting three white students for hanging nooses in the so called "white tree" at Jena High School after black students sat under it, Walters said (in the same New York Times op-ed) this act "broke no law. I searched the Louisiana criminal code for a crime that I could prosecute. There is none." But Louisiana Revised Statute 14:107.2 creates a hate crime for any institutional vandalism or criminal trespass motivated by race. His discretion, not Louisiana law, is what led to a lack of charges in this case.

Similar discretion was applied after an incident on December 1, 2006. A black teenager, Robert Bailey, was attacked by a group of whites, beaten to the ground, and apparently hit with a beer bottle. Bailey suffered a gash to his head, and Walters could have prosecuted the group of whites with felony charges. Instead, Walters charged one man with a misdemeanor, but that person served no prison time. The others walked.

A very different and more dangerous form of discretion was applied three days later, when an assault on Justin Barker, a white student, occurred. Robert Bailey and five other black teens were arrested and charged by the police with aggravated second-degree battery, a very harsh charge under the circumstances. But Walters went even further and used his discretion on December 7th to increase the charges to attempted murder, later arguing that the students' tennis shoes were dangerous weapons.

A week later, Walters announced that he would try Mychal Bell for attempted murder as an adult, another example of his discretion being aggressively used to bring harsh punishments only to certain young people. When Walters reduced the charges against Bell, he should also have taken the case back to juvenile court. His failure to do so is another example of an inappropriate application of discretion. The result was a conviction that could have ended with a 22-year prison sentence. The 3rd Circuit Court has already ruled that Walters' decision was improper, and nullified the decision.

Walters' misconduct extends beyond these instances of uneven application of his discretion. After black students staged a sit-in under the contested tree to protest the light punishment for the noose hangers, Walters came to Jena High School and told the student body that if they did not settle down, "[he could] make [their] lives disappear with a stroke of [his] pen. " This statement was confirmed by Walters during Mychal Bell's court proceedings, and clearly connects to the actions he took after Justin Barker was assaulted.

Walters' threats against the Jena 6 defendants were not limited to the school assembly. In December 13, 2006, he published a statement in The Jena Times reading in part "I will not tolerate this type of behavior. To those who act in this manner, I tell you that you will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law and with the harshest crimes that the facts justify. When you are convicted, I will seek the maximum penalty allowed by law. I will see to it that you never again menace the students at any school in this parish." There are clear problems with his public characterization, prior to any trials, of the young men who had been arrested for the assault on Justin Barker as criminals who had been menacing the school. The wording of the statement and an introduction associating his tirade with the "recent two incidents at Jena High School" created the impression that those accused of involvement in the fight were also suspected of setting the November 30th, school fire. The Louisiana Rules of Professional Conduct 3.6(a) clearly state that: "A lawyer who is participating or has participated in the investigation or litigation of a matter shall not make an extrajudicial statement that the lawyer knows or reasonably should know will be disseminated by means of public communication and will have a substantial likelihood of materially prejudicing an adjudicative proceeding in the matter." His statements to The Jena Times clearly violate this code.

It seems clear from my knowledge of this case that there are ample grounds to conduct a timely and thorough investigation into Reed Walters' conduct as District Attorney of LaSalle Parish. If you choose not to investigate DA Walters, I expect to receive a written explanation of why you deem that an investigation is not warranted. Otherwise, I look forward to hearing the results.

Thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

Sincerely,

Your signature

Let's clean up the courts. Then we can tackle the environment. (Apparently today is Blog Action Day, and the theme is the environment, which to me takes a far backseat to injustice.)

Nobody Here But Us Racists

The Jena backlash continues:

From the Kansas City Star via Negrophile:

All of this is to say that blaming “outsiders” for protests of local grievances is a well-established tradition in the history of American social protest. Thus, it is not surprising that officials in Jena, La., want to blame an outsider, Tom Bean[I think this is a mistake? I think the name is Alan Bean], founder of the Friends of Justice, for stirring up trouble regarding the six black youths charged in a schoolyard assault on a white student.

From the Independent Weekly in Lafayette, LA:

The article also introduces Jena residents who say the situation is being blown out of proportion by the “international and national media, national civil rights activists and Internet bloggers.” Most believe Jena’s “a safe, nice place to raise a family.”

(A nice, safe place to raise a white family, you mean.)

This isn't new. It had commenced a-brewin' in Jena before the big rally, because Jena was already getting a little too much attention for its segregating ways (article by Etan Thomas and Dave Zirin, posted by Davey D. at Davey D.'s Hip Hop Corner:

Outsiders are always what people in the South have called those who challenge racism. But the story of Jena is not an outsider/insider story. It's a story
about the worst tradition of what is known as Southern Justice.

At Democracy Now, there is an interview with Caseptla Bailey and Tina Jones, the mothers of Robert Bailey and Bryant Purvis. The interview took place the day after the rally. The question about the accusation that outsiders were causing all the commotion came up:

AMY GOODMAN: And, Caseptla, what do you say to those who say this is a bunch of outsiders coming in, everything was fine in Jena before they started marching on our town?

CASEPTLA BAILEY: Well, I’d like to say that everything wasn’t fine in Jena. That’s why the outsiders are here, and that’s why everything has gone so tremendously within the last few months. So I’d like to applaud those people that have come here from the outside, to come in and to support us and to help us and assist us in this matter. So I’d like to say hats off to those persons.

These Things Happened Not Long Ago

This was noted at FOJ. It is a slideshow of photographs of lynchings, with a narrative. Everyone should watch this. This is the history that explains why the hanging of nooses can never be interpreted as a "prank."

File Under: I Shake My Head

Those college kids today. Crazy. All them pranks they be pulling:

NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A north Louisiana university is investigating two of its students after a video surfaced on a student's personal Web page depicting several white youths pretending to re-enact a racial beating.

The brief, grainy video, posted Tuesday on YouTube.com, was related to the racially charged atmosphere in Jena, a central Louisiana town where a group of black youths were initially charged with attempted murder in the beating of a white student.

On the video, one of the students can be heard shouting racial epithets.

(Courtesy of FOJ.)

Educate, Don't Incarcerate

. . . as one of the Jena signs so eloquently put it.

More than three times as many black people live in prison cells as in college dorms, the government said in a report to be released Thursday. . .

Black students are more likely to attend segregated schools with high concentrations of poverty, less qualified teachers, lower expectations and a less demanding curriculum [says Amy Stuart Wells, a professor of sociology and education at Columbia University's Teachers College]. "And they are perceived by society as terrible schools, so it is hard to get accepted into college," Wells said. "Even if you are a high-achieving kid who beats the odds, you are less likely to have access to the kinds of courses that colleges are looking for." Students who don't graduate high school are much more likely to go to prison, said Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at UCLA. Nearly 40 percent of inmates lack a high school diploma or the equivalent, according to the census data. "The criminal economy is one of the only alternatives in some of these places," Orfield said. "You basically have the criminalization of a whole community, particularly in some inner cities." Blacks made up 41 percent of the nation's 2 million prison and jail inmates in 2006. Non-Hispanic whites made up 37 percent and Hispanics made up 19 percent.

P.S. Some good writing on Jena at The Education of a Bookshop Clerk.

You Got a Right to Say It

. . . and I got a right to be disgusted by it:

Let's get this out of the way: what happened to the Jena 6 was heinous, non-blacks should be reexamining their hearts, and heads should be rolling Nifong-style. I'm as happy as the next Negro to stick it to the man (I'm on record as saying I'd have thrown a rock, just one and into a bush—more of a tossing if you will—after the Rodney King verdict had I been an Angeleno), but this wasn't exactly Selma and these brothers weren't exactly the Scottsboro Boys. Folks should go to jail for stomping a random (and lone) person into the ER, white or not, nooses or not. Not for attempted murder, of course not, but aggravated battery sounds about right, especially when you factor in that the stompee was not, as far as we know, one of the noose hangers. And when we have it on good authority that Jena High also boasts "black bleachers" where honkies fear not tread. Racism, and its effects on the ground, is rarely simple.

No one is saying it is simple. But people are saying, "Enough is enough." That, at least, is a simple message. And what this writer fails to address is the context.

The most objectionable portion of this piece, however, is the self-righteous sputtering:

I made no effort to get to Jena. Instead, I spent that time reading worthy analyses of the proveable, addressable, effects of racism in the criminal justice system. These bespectacled economists and sociologists are downright radical. They already knew that racism filled our prisons; now they're proving how it affects America at large. They're doing more good on Capitol Hill making these "tough on crime" politicians change gears than all the buses in Jena.

To each is given his calling. To each is given his gifts. Some are called to lift their voices in protest at injustice; others are called to research. Others are called simply to labor, or to do what is in front of them at any given time. We none of us got to pick, but when we hear the voice, we go and do its bidding, or we suffer the fate of Jonah.

Who among us has the wisdom to say which gift is most valuable? Not me, not you, and certainly not Debra Dickerson.

Call It What It Is

K. sent me this, from Mithras at Fables of the Reconstruction:

Picture the scene: 16-year-old girl attending her friend's birthday party in the school cafeteria. Someone bumps her and she drops her cake. Security guard orders her to clean it up, but when she does, he is not satisfied. When she refuses to do any more, he twists her arm behind her back, breaking her wrist, and slams her head onto a table while saying, "Hold still nappy head."

You know without my telling you the race of the victim and the race of the security guard. Will that white security guard be charged with attempted murder, I wonder?

Sounds Like Blame

Here, from the NYT via Negrophile, is what seems to be an example of using a series of unrelated events to come to some kind of conclusion with lots of opinions thrown in:

In New York City, the tabloids published sensational details of the bias suit brought by a black former executive for the Knicks, Anucha Browne Sanders, who claims that she was frequently called a “bitch” and a “ho” by the Knicks coach and president, Isiah Thomas. In a video deposition, Thomas said that while it is always wrong for a white man to verbally abuse a black woman in such terms, it was “not as much ... I’m sorry to say” for a black man to do so.

•

Across the nation, religious African-Americans were shocked that the evangelical minister Juanita Bynum, an enormously popular source of inspiration for churchgoing black women, said she was brutally beaten in a parking lot by her estranged husband, Bishop Thomas Weeks.

•

O. J. Simpson, the malevolent central player in an iconic moment in the nation’s recent black-white (as well as male-female) relations, reappeared on the scene, charged with attempted burglary, kidnapping and felonious assault in Las Vegas, in what he claimed was merely an attempt to recover stolen memorabilia.

These events all point to something that has been swept under the rug for too long in black America: the crisis in relations between men and women of all classes and, as a result, the catastrophic state of black family life, especially among the poor.

Go looking for evidence of troubled relationships among whites, or Asians, or Latinos. You'll find them. (And by the way? O.J. and Isiah Thomas are anything but poor.) So the writer uses these big Easy Reader Series news stories as the foundation for conclusions that should require some very specific supporting data.

I doubt if many supporters of the Jena 6 "view events there, and the racial horror of our prisons, as solely the result of white racism." Nothing is ever one thing. But how can anyone deny the white racism is the framework underneath it all? It almost sounds as if the writer is saying that Black men and women are incapable of having sound relationships, and unwilling and unable to raise children with care and thoughtfulness--and I know that is not true. In fact, it almost sounds as if the writer has subscribed to the hoax of race, and saying that Black people are fundamentally different (not in a good way), and that cannot be true. (For most of all time, there was really no such thing as race, until it served people who wanted to take from others to name the others as being of a distinct and different race and therefore undeserving of being treated as human. But that is another, much bigger topic, and I do digress.)

He goes on to propose that "even after removing racial bias in our judicial and prison system — as we should and must do — disproportionate numbers of young black men will continue to be incarcerated." I wonder.

Because even though the writer complains that the Reverends Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are taking a simple, one-dimensional view of the matter by protesting racism, it seems to me that most of the factors the writer blames for the mess are the results of systemic racism and if not racism, America's War on Poor People:

The circumstances that far too many African-Americans face — the lack of paternal support and discipline; the requirement that single mothers work regardless of the effect on their children’s care; the hypocritical refusal of conservative politicians to put their money where their mouths are on family values; the recourse by male youths to gangs as parental substitutes; the ghetto-fabulous culture of the streets; the lack of skills among black men for the jobs and pay they want; the hypersegregation of blacks into impoverished inner-city neighborhoods — all interact perversely with the prison system that simply makes hardened criminals of nonviolent drug offenders and spits out angry men who are unemployable, unreformable and unmarriageable, closing the vicious circle.

The problem with this article is that instead of offering the facts to support conclusions or a real analysis of any of the hot-button issues it brings up and then dismisses (Black on Black violence; domestic abuse; poverty among Blacks; gangs as a family substitution; school segregation; the failure of school to prepare Black students for the workplace, etc.), it lapses into offering these unfounded conclusions, conclusions that provide justification for a certain amount of self-righteous denial about what is really happening in our country. Always so much more comfortable to blame the people in trouble than it is to help.

Get Out the Pickaxes, We Got Work to Do

This article in Education Week spells out ways Jena High School administrators might have been able to stop the train that brought tens of thousands of protesters in:

On Aug. 31, 2006, school leaders in Jena, La., arrived to find two nooses hanging from an oak tree on the campus of Jena High School—and boarded a racially charged roller coaster that has yet to stop moving.

The events since that incident—including the beating of a white student and resulting criminal charges against six black schoolmates that have drawn international attention—offer tough lessons for principals and other administrators who must grapple with racial tensions in their schools.

For one, principals and teachers can head off such incidents by knowing the sources of conflict and acting to defuse them, experts on race relations say.

But when prevention fails, for whatever reason, school leaders should treat such matters seriously, condemn any offensive act, and mete out fair punishment. Communication with students, parents, and the community is crucial to keep the situation from worsening, and administrators may need to draw on outside mediators for help.

At A.'s and B.'s school, the administrators have signed on with this conflict resolution program. It involves "I statements" ("I feel sad when you act like such a freakin jerk") and apologies and is, as far as I am concerned, a buncha baloney, an opinion I frequently share with A. and B., along with my opinion that words mean nothing, and you can tell how people really feel from their actions. Someone can apologize sweetly a million times, but if he keeps tripping you/taking your lunch/failing to call when he says he's gonna (that last obviously belongs to me), you know how he really feels.

. . . Paul C. Gorski, an assistant professor of education at Hamline University in St. Paul, Minn., who has been a consultant for schools grappling with racial tensions, said he is wary of a conflict-resolution approach if it doesn’t enable people to talk about racism in “deep and complex ways.”

He said that getting to the root of racial friction means “bringing people together in a dialogue so that people’s experiences can be shared—so that people can develop a deeper understanding of how racism is systemic.”

I share Mr. Gorski's wariness. I am all for genuine resolution of conflict, and I am all for the genuine expression of regret (and even remorse) for the negative effects of one's actions and for feeling empathy and all that. But I have a violent objection to coercing empty apologies from unrepentant thuglets.

And I am even more violently opposed to the implicit concept (in the program at A.'s and B.'s school, anyway) that it always takes two to tango and that both sides must always apologize. Sometimes, there is a bully, and the bully needs to be taken in hand. Sometimes, as in the case of Jena, there are people making threats (i.e., the noose-hangers) against the innocent (all Black students at JHS), and that needs to be stopped immediately and definitely.

As Mr. Gorski said, everyone needs to get to this foundation of understanding that "racism is systemic."

Racism is real and not merely perceived and to call attention to it does not mean, as Clarence Thomas seems to be going about saying, a matter of Black people painting themselves as victims:

The vehemence of his contention that he was made the victim of false allegations to keep him from joining the court, and the clarity of his statements about the propensity for black Americans to paint themselves, and agree to be painted, as victims, is certain to raise the issue of race in a presidential election contest in which for the first time one of the front-runners, Senator Obama, is an African-American.

(Thanks to Negrophile.)

Oh, No, He Dint!

He did! He did!

From K. the Brilliant at Gall and Gumption, this message:

Fish. Barrel.

These are them fish:

On the September 27 edition of MSNBC Live with Dan Abrams, while discussing Fox News host Bill O'Reilly's recent controversial comments about his visit to Sylvia's restaurant in Harlem, host Dan Abrams asked his guest John DePetro, a Rhode Island radio talk-show host: "John, look, you've been on the show and defended Bill O'Reilly before. Don't you wish that he would just be quiet and put this behind him?" After claiming that O'Reilly was "taken out of context," DePetro asserted: "It was a discussion on race and we're talking about Harlem. And by and large -- I lived in New York for years -- white people don't go to Harlem." He continued: "If Dan Abrams and John DePetro, Bill O'Reilly, some white guys are sitting around a table, and Dan Abrams said, 'Yeah, I was up in Harlem last night.' We would think you were either, a) looking for drugs, or, b) looking for a prostitute." Abrams responded by asserting: "That is so idiotic, John," to which DePetro replied: "It is not idiotic," later adding: "It's a primarily black restaurant. It is still a primarily black area."

Oh, people. The whole exchange is gold. Please go read it. It is a spectacle of stupidity.