Taser America: The Death Of Oscar Grant

Unless you've been living under a rock, you know that the officer that shot Oscar Grant in the back while laying on the ground was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. While a lot of people are rightfully not satisfied with that verdict, legally it was probably the only one that had any chance of sticking.

When I followed the Sean Bell trial I thought that the evidence against Oliver was so compelling given that he saw no weapon, Hadn't been fired upon, walked across the front of a vehicle he claimed shots were coming from (who does that?) and of course, famously reloaded more times than Neo in the Matrix. In the end though I came to understand why the Sean Bell case ended with acquittals of all involved:

If you read all the counts you'll note that there is NO second degree manslaughter charge against Isnora or Oliver for shooting at Guzman. This is significant because first degree manslaughter charges requires the proof of intent. I said back in march of 2007 that intent would not be provable. Second degree manslaughter requires no intent.

I also wrote:

So the question that needs to be asked is why was there no second degree manslaughter (or attempted manslaughter if such a charge exists) leveled at Isnora and Oliver?

Indeed this case answered that question. I will repeat the observation from that blog post: It is near impossible to prove intent when convicting a police officer. All police shootings are intentional and police are assumed by the general public to have no malice in that intent. Those who do not hold this view are vigorously opposed by the defense. It appears that the prosecutors of the Oscar Grant case either learned from the "mistake" of the NY prosecutors or they aren't as corrupt as NY prosecutors in throwing the case from the very beginning. So generally the successful prosecution of Mehserle is a step in the right direction. Yes, I too would have preferred a murder conviction, but this is a start. However, this is not what really bothers me.

The real problem I have is with the widespread misuse of tasers by police and other security personnel. The taser was invented as a non-lethal means of subduing a dangerous suspect. The point of the taser was that it be used in cases where a ballistic gun would be used. The understanding that such weapons would only be used if a police officer was in mortal danger or the suspect presented a clear danger to other people. unfortunately tasers are increasingly being used as punishment devices by police who in some cases feel that they can "get even" with a "difficult" suspect without leaving black and blue marks or other clear signs of police misconduct.

Recently tasers made a brief entry into the popular consciousness when a student protestor/questioner at a college event with John Kerry, was infamously tasered by security, while he repeatedly cried out "don't taze me bro!"
There was absolutely no justification to subject that student to a potentially lethal jolt of electricity. Yes I said "lethal". For those who have not been on the pain end of an electric shock, I will inform you that there are two potential death scenarios from a taser:

1) You already have a heart condition such as an arrhythmia. An electric shock could stop your heart causing death.
2) Since the taser causes the person to lose control of all muscle function they tend to fall. Such a fall could result in a blow to the head as it hits either an object or the ground. Such a blow could either be fatal or cause permanent brain damage.

Given these risks it is shocking....yes shocking, that police tase people multiple times.

So a student who was asking a question (and being quite long winded with it) earned that kind of treatment? He posed an immediate threat to the public and the officers? No. yet it took Senator Kerry a long time to even realize that something very wrong was going on. While the video got many hits on YouTube, there was no public outcry to regulate the use of taser, though you and I, as civilians are barred in many states from carrying such electrical self-defense devices.

The next publicly aware miss-use of a taser occurred in NY, where a man who was off his medication and butt naked had been chased by police onto a ledge. His deadly weapon? A florescent lamp. The police who clearly felt they had better things to do with their time than spend it talking this man down, shot him with the taser. And as expected, he lost control of his limbs, fell off the ledge and died of head injuries. Of course it is well known that the NYPD is not shy about using other "tools" to beat on and kill civilians whom are "annoying them" with their "furtive movements" and the like.

As problematic as that was, there was still one that showed that the public itself is really at fault for the misuse of tasers in America. Recently at a baseball game a kid decided he would draw attention to himself (and his favorite team I suppose) and jumped onto the outfield and ran around dodging an overweight security guard who, probably annoyed at the fact that he could not catch the fellow, got within taser range and shot him. When the news broke, a majority of people felt that the officer had done nothing wrong. The victim of this action deserved the tasering because he was being a dick.

But again, a taser is supposed to be an alternative to deadly force. How does running around a field making an ass of oneself rise to "deadly force"? The disincentive to go out on a baseball field is the arrest and conviction for trespassing, the fine, and possible banning from future games. Millions of people attend baseball games without such incidents. How do we justify the use of potential deadly force (no one knows if this kid had a heart condition) for "being a dick"?

And so we get to Oscar Grant. Mehserle claimed that he thought he had grabbed his taser. Lets ignore that a taser and ballistic gun are shaped differently, weight differently and are on different sides of an officer; why was Mehserle trying to tase a person who was on his stomach and handcuffed? The answer lies in the Taser culture that has taken over America. It is only because it is acceptable to tase a suspect that Oscar Grant is dead. Had the officer not had the option to "apply punishment" to Oscar Grant and his only course of action was to shoot Grant in the back, which would have been provable murder (I know I'm being optimistic here). So assuming that Mehserle did not intend to shoot Grant, but rather "punish" him we see that the taser is THE game changer here.

This is why I think that taser use needs to be regulated and misuse of tasers to "punish" suspects ought to be grounds for disciplinary action including prosecution. Given that the taser is supposed to be a substitute for a ballistic weapon, then it's use should be taken as seriously as any shooting. The officer should have to show that the suspect was an immediate danger to the public or the officer involved. In the Grant case, the officer should have been charged with a felony assault and murder. It is my position that the use of the taser against Oscar grant was intentional. The officer intended to do physical harm to Grant and therefore should have been tried for felony assault. And since anything else that happens in the commission of a felony is also on the hook, then the charge for murder would have more weight, since the assault portion should have been provable without doubt. Personally I don't like the felony murder rule, but while it's being used, why not put it to good use for officers who kill civilians while assaulting them?

Africa Solar Power

From AfricaNews:

Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade has said that African industries are at risk of vanishing if Europe harnesses the potential of the sun as they will have the added advantage of producing at cheaper cost, making any competition from the continent less likely...

“Solar energy is unique in that the investment is expensive initially, but after three years it decreases … So I can say I'm going to offer free energy to the continent,” Wade told Les Afriques in an exclusive interview.

The Senegalese leader said the energy consumption of Africa is 70,000 megawatts, and he added that with a 100,000-megawatt plant, “we could have energy self-sufficiency for fifteen more years.”

Diop long said that Africa could be solar powered.

A lot of Gall

So one of the officers involved in the shooting death of Sean Bell is suing the Bell estate over the injuries he sustained when Bell ran into him with his vehicle:

Police Officer Michael Carey's lawsuit says Bell was boozed-up when he got behind the wheel of the car after his bachelor party on Nov. 25, 2006, and also claims the doomed groom failed to wear glasses or contact lenses despite having poor eyesight.

"[Officer Carey] suffered serious leg injury when [Bell] crashed into the vehicle he was riding in before Officer Carey ever drew his gun and fired a shot," said Carey's lawyer, Richard Signorelli.

It was Officer Isnora that stood in front of Bell's vehicle pointing while pointing a gun. It was Isnora who fired the first shots that caused Bell to drive off. It was the negligence of Isnora that started the entire situation. Officer Carey is injured because those officers threatened the life of a citizen who thought he was being held up and defended himself.

The GALL of this "officer of the law" to suggest that the situation was other than what it was.

Beauty Standards in African Communities

I've mentioned before my disdain at seeing skin-lightening creams in the predominantly black supermarket I go to. Recently I was in the UK and in the location I was staying were a number of "beauty" shops that had a majority African customer base (a few white women were observed in the shops). The attached photo is typical of the kinds of images that were the norm in those shops (I was with my aunt so...). Of particular interest to me was the number of African women with "perms" who didn't do anything else with their "newly" straight hair. By that I mean, here in the stats I'm used to seeing straightened hair styled. Many of the women I saw simply were "happy" to have the hair straight (and weaved) down their backs even though most times it looked ridiculous.

Colonialism has always had the cooperation of the locals

The NY Times has a piece on Angola's booming economy and the "return" of the Portuguese to that country. The article has this quote:

“Clearly, we share the same language and have much more in common with Angolans than the Chinese and others, but Portuguese investors also need to make huge efforts not to be seen as pushing for a return to colonial times,” he said. “Little can be achieved in Angola without full help and cooperation from local partners.”

As I discussed in an episode of Garvey's Ghost TV on the Trans Atlantic Slave Trade, the colonization and enslavement of Africans in what is today Angola happened with the cooperation of the locals. The only way this would be any different is if the leadership of Angola takes the "investment" from the Portuguese and used it to develop non-urban areas and improve the education and quality of life for it's residents. One sign that this may not happen is the apparent high amount of imports that Angola is dealing with. No doubt these imports will have an adverse impact on local producers.

It's the 4th Amendment Stupid

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

-4th Amendment to the US Constitution


Heather Mac Donald, the local "expert" on black crime is apparently out turning tricks for the NYT today. I know that's harsh but I have such little respect for this woman, who I say she is whoring for attention and the NYT is her latest john. I've dealt with Ms. MacDonald before So I'll leave it to the reader to go there and see why I am so harsh on this woman. However; in this case I must point out the obvious flaw in Mac Donald's argument.

Nowhere in her opinion piece for the NYT does Heather Mac Donald even discuss that most of the people stopped and frisked by the NYPD have done nothing to warrant being stopped and therefore their 4th Amendment rights are being violated. Often multiple times. They are simply black (or brown) and often making "other" kinds of behavior that allegedly constitutes probable cause. No, to mention that would be to inconvenient for Mac Donald's argument about "where crime is".

I suppose Heather Mac Donald comes to use via a time machine where she thinks Dred Scott is still in effect. Well at least legally. I'm sorry to break it to Heather but the NYPD's Stop and harass policy is unconstitutional and unfortunately the so called leadership of NYS and NYC are afraid to call it what it is and stop it.

I suppose it doesn't bother Heather Mac Donald that 95+% of the people stopped have not only not done anything, were not in the process of committing a crime and shockingly had no weapons or other contraband on them at the time of harassment. It's stuff like that which got the state of New Jersey in trouble. Essentially you cannot claim "this is where crime happens" as an excuse to end run the 4th Amendment.

So the next time Heather Mac Donald gets to writing about black crime, someone ought to remind her of that little document called the U.S. Constitution.

Joseph Nevins is on Crack

I swear that the advocates for illegal immigrants make more and more absurd arguments with each passing day. To be sure, straight up White Supremacists give them a whole lot of ammo with their clear xenophobic rantings, but the arguments that come from the supposedly intelligent left also give much ammo to those who oppose them. Even I have to wonder at times whether these individuals think that a law is wrong simply because it inconveniences them or a family member.

Like for example a piece I read online some time ago about a couple that met on a cruise ship. She was a citizen of another country and he a US citizen (how, I don't care). They fell in love and decided to marry. One problem was that her visa was a work visa and specifically tied to the ship she was on. They didn't want to "wait" for the process of legal immigration so she decided to violate the terms of her visa and stay in the US. The consequences for this, which apparently were known by both parties, was not only that she risked immediate deportation should she be caught, but upon return to her country of origins, she could not re-enter the US for at least 10 years. Sucks doesn't it.

Of course rather than blame themselves for walking head first into such a situation, they want to blame US immigration. See this is what bothers me about most of the so called "immigrant rights" groups that I read about. People make decisions to enter the US knowing full well that they are breaking US law. They do not care. They are willing to take the chance. And hey I admire that. But the flip side, is if enforcement finds you, the gig is up. The host country owes no-one who violates their immigration law, nothing but a return trip. It's even written in the UN Declaration of Human Rights. Read it.

The source of today's rant was a piece in Counterpunch by Joseph Nevins where he, like a few others compare the issues that Illegal immigrants with the Civil Rights Movement.

This time, however, the target is not Jim Crow, but what some have referred to as Juan Crow. Like its pre-Civil Rights cousin, it, too, is effectively a system of apartheid. It is one that denies “illegal” immigrants many basic rights—no matter how long they have been present in this country. And just as in the 1960s, fundamental decency—one informed by an expansive notion of human rights—requires a dismantling of this unjust system.

No my friend, the enforcement of US immigration law, not even to get into the issues of identity fraud, are in no way shape or form equivalent to aparthied South Africa. It is an insult to both African-Americans and South-Africans to string these two things in the same paragraph.

You'll note that Joseph here has to use the term "expansive notion" of human rights, because he knows like I know that the UN Declaration of Human Rights does not support his argument.

I won't repeat the discussion of the UN DOHR here but in reference to the above quote, a person who violates immigration law of a given country, in this case illegal entry, is in violation of that law so long as he or she remains in that country. For those having a hard time wrapping your head around this let me give another example.

In NYS if your car insurance lapses you are required to pay a fine of $5 per day (it's probably more now) that you do not have insurance. Not having car insurance is a "rolling offense" in that you are not just guilty on the day it was reported you are guilty for every subsequent day you go without insurance.

Similarly with illegal residence in any country. That presence is illegal at all times. To be more blunt, Legally every person who in in a country illegally whether it is by overstaying their visa or jumping a fence is a fugitive from the law. Length of stay is no argument against this. Just like you can't say to the NYSDMV that you shouldn't have to pay the fine for lack of insurance because you never had an accident during that time.

Moving on:

This era’s would-be Greensboro took place at Senator John McCain’s Tucson office—on May 17, the 56th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. the Topeka Board of Education decision...The action led to the arrest of four youths for trespassing. As three of them are unauthorized immigrants, Pima County sheriffs subsequently turned them over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). ICE released them the next day, but they will have to appear before a judge at a later date, and face possible deportation to their countries of birth.

This guy is straight faced comparing the decision that legally desegregated schools in the US, which currently enrolls students regardless of immigration or citizenship status, to the issue of deportation? Really? My other cheek is stinging right now.

Even worse, the organizers showed a complete lack of concern for the four boys now facing deportation. Unlike the Greensboro sit-ins where citizens were exercising their rights as citizens and who could not face deportation or trespassing unless somehow trespass laws apply to public spaces (I'm not a lawyer), these fellows, as discussed above were already committing a Federal Civil infraction.

Let me detour for a minute here. The reason immigration is not a legal "crime" in the US is because criminal defendants have more "rights" than one in a civil court. Not only is the burden of proof less in a civil proceeding (preponderance of the evidence vs. beyond reasonable doubt) but they can be handled by administrative judges (no jury) and other things that allow for an expedited process.Anyway, back to the story.

By putting these 4 young men on the radar, they guaranteed that they would be picked up by ICE. The law is clear that once lawful contact is made with a person, their citizenship status may be ascertained by law enforcement. This has always been the case, even before the new Arizona law. That is not going to change regardless to what amnesty occurs. So I have little sympathy for the four, unless they were not informed of the additional risk they faced by coming into voluntary contact with law enforcement. Even my mother, a legalized citizen has said on many occasions that it is "not wise" to bring legal attention to yourself while you are not documented.

Joseph then forwards the "Great Lie":

That the young people risked such draconian punishment to champion what is ultimately a very modest legislative measure speaks to the deep-seated frustration among immigrant communities and advocates in a climate of growing repression of non-citizens living in the United States, and the dim prospects for significant change.

The great lie here is the "climate of repression of non-citizens living in the United States."
An utter and complete lie. First and foremost, not every non-citizen is an illegal immigrant. Some are resident aliens (that is a legal term). Some are permanent aliens. They have not sought US citizenship but remain in the US. Then you have plain ol' visitors who are here for work and tourism. To conflate all non-citizens with illegal/undocumented immigrants is a "great lie". Are there segments of US society that have issues with, say, H1B visas which import computer science engineers from India displacing (perhaps) US born engineers? Certainly. And why should they NOT be concerned with such a practice?

Moving on:

While critics of extra-legal migration typically resist attempts to liken efforts to enhance immigrant rights with the efforts of African Americans to end Jim Crow, matters of citizenship were also at the center of the Civil Rights movement. It was precisely because white society treated African Americans as, at best, second-class citizens which necessitated the struggle against institutionalized racism. And just as today, supporters of the then-status quo pointed to the law as a way of perpetuating its ugly reality and criticizing those who would defy it.

Extra-legal? I do believe that is the first I've heard that particular phrase used. But again with the Jim Crow. Let me clue Joseph in to the differences here. Black Americans are not immigrants to America (we'll ignore certain historical things for the time being). Secondly they legally had the same rights as every other citizen (certainly they had all the obligations). Their citizenship rights and privileges were being illegally abridged by the states. The CRM was not about gaining rights that they didn't have. The CRM was about getting the states to stop abridging those rights in blatant violation of the constitution.

Immigrants are guests in a country. They are allowed in under specific circumstances and are allowed to enjoy such hospitality so long as they agree to the terms of entry. violation of the terms of entry result in deportation. This is universally known. What illegal immigrants who follow Joseph are asking for is to not have to abide by the rules of entry. They feel that they are special. They deserve some special treatment that other immigrant who went "by the book" don't even get. In fact many of them are currently getting privileges that citizens cannot get. Some states hand out drivers licenses to persons who clearly do not have Social Security cards or other proof of ID. Citizens can't do that.

More:

Citizenship is ultimately about membership. Whether we like it or not, immigrants—“illegal” and “legal”—are members of American society and should be fully treated as such. They live and work here, and make myriad contributions, while reaping a disproportionately small share of the benefits given their lack of formal citizenship rights. That such inequality is legally enshrined makes it no more just than laws of previous eras such as those against interracial marriage or the right of women to vote.

I suppose then that Joseph is a proponent of giving corporations person status. After all they "work" and "live" here and make a myriad of contributions. Or perhaps toss the distinction between a foreign entity and a domestic one. After all, as far as he's concerned so long as you live and work here you should be a citizen. In fact how about anyone who has lived and worked anywhere just declare themselves a citizen and be done with it. Elections ought to be really fun then.

In reality Joseph simply does not believe in immigration law at all. He should just say so. As far as he's concerned the US (and I assume only the US) ought to simply grant citizenship to any and all who request it. Lets stop with the charade about civil rights and such. If Joseph does believe that a country, including the US, has a right to determine not only who can be a citizen but how many people may immigrate into the country at any given time, then he must also agree that the state would have the right to enforce it's immigration laws. And once he agrees to that, he would find himself on the other side of his own argument. But that's not the point here.

The point here is that advocates for "extra-legal" immigrants would be better served to not compare their issue with the Civil Rights Movement. Doing so really underscores the lack of understanding as to what the Civil Rights Movement was about and alienates those of us who do know what it is about.

BP and Iran

From Counterpunch:

What goes around comes around. One of the greatest bailouts in history came in 1953, when the Eisenhower administration authorized a CIA-backed coup in Iran. The Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, owned by the British government, had been expropriated and nationalized in 1951 by unanimous vote of Iran’s parliament. The ’53 coup evicted prime minister Mohammed Mossadeq and installed Shah Reza Pahlevi, the creature of the West’s oil companies , with full tyrannical powers. The AIOC got back 40 per cent of its old concession and became an internationally owned consortium, renamed… British Petroleum.

So when we see all the talk about Iran and sanctions please do keep the above in mind.

Don't Count On It

So I found this gem sitting in my twitter timeline.

The linked piece has a slideshow of different women holding signs about what they would do if they had that alleged:

There’s a $10,622 gap between the median yearly earnings of men and women. That’s $10,622 less per year for women and their families in a difficult economy.

Now the truth of that statement is that the $10,622 is a statistical median. This means half of the women have a much smaller gap or are out-earning men and the other half have a greater deficit. But the odds of a random woman on the street actually being paid 10 grand less than men of equal position, time on the job, etc. are very slim. So it is rather amusing to see random women, whom we know nothing of their actual employment situation, holding up signs about what they would do with 10 grand as if somehow they individually are owed 10 grand. And the quote implies somehow that some nefarious man group up and decided that since the market has collapsed they'll stick to women by paying them even less (never mind that men have been seeing the short end of the employment stick since the Great Crash(tm) )

I could take a picture of what I would do with 10 grand, but honestly I can't even prove that I am being paid less than what I should be SIMPLY based on my race. So the pictures of women with babies may pull at the heartstrings but I seriously doubt any of them are actually owed anything close to that amount as individuals.

Of course this slide show could explain why certain women feel that Ellen Woods is entitled to $3/4 billion from Tiger Woods.

Jonathan Cook Joins Richard Cohen in Dumb Land

He argues, in defense of Helen Thomas:

But 62 years on from Israel’s creation, most Jewish citizens have no home to go to in Poland and Germany -- or in Iraq and Yemen, for that matter. There is also an uncomfortable echo in her words of the chauvinism underpinning demands from some Jews -- and many Israelis -- that Palestinians should “go home to the 22 Arab states”.

No you twit. That Jews from Germany or Poland up and left their property and lives in those countries to take up residence in land stolen from others does not give some kind of squatters rights to stay.

You left your home to invade someone else land? Well sucks to be you. And it doesn't even compare to the argument that Palestinians ought to go back to the "22 Arab States".

Look fool it's called Palestine. They're called Palestinians. What part of that don't you understand?

And this fellow fashions himself to be a supporter of Helen Thomas and a liberal of sorts. That's why I cannot stand most of these white liberals. Always being paternalistic to "colored folk" (and we'll give Helen a pass for now) who speak contrary to the White Liberal Orthodoxy(tm).

What Richard Cohen Missed

Yesterday I saw this piece by Richard Cohen entitled "What Helen Thomas Missed" In what was a largely accurate but entirely irrelevant piece in regards to the "flotilla incident".

Thomas, of Lebanese ancestry and almost 90, has never been shy about her anti-Israel views, for which, as far as I'm concerned, she is wrong and to which she is entitled. Then the other day, she performed a notable public service by revealing how very little she knew.

To take my cue from Cohen let's rewrite his intro paragraph:

Cohen of apparent Jewish ancestry and who-the-fuck knows what age but certainly old has never been shy to apologize for Israeli actions and other acts of racism for which, as far as I'm concerned, He is wrong and to which he is entitled. Then the other day he performed a notable public service by yet again showing how totally racist he is.

I certainly don't think that the Washington Post would allow a columnist to post an intro like that (disregarding the F-bomb) 'cause I doubt they would find it appropriate to or even relevant to discuss Cohen's supposed Jewishness, age or consistent "Anti-Palestinian" views. But hey, He's writing for the Washington post and I'm complaining on a blog. Such is life.

Here is the meat of Cohen's argument:

In the Polish city of Kielce, on July 4, 1946 -- more than a year after the end of the war -- rumors of a Jewish ritual murder triggered a pogrom in which 42 Jewish Holocaust survivors were killed. The Kielce murders were not, by any means, the sole example of why Jews could not "go home." When I visited the Polish city where my mother had been born, Ostroleka, I was told of a Jew who survived Auschwitz only to be murdered when he tried to reclaim his business. In much of Eastern Europe, Jews feared for their lives.

Sounds good until you realize that the above has shit to do with Palestinians. And the above point is what the Iranian president has been badly presenting when he discusses the subject. That Europeans committed atrocities against Jews is not for the Palestinians or any other group of people to be made to make up for. Period.

Not a single Palestinian was involved with that Polish Pogrom.

Not a single Palestinian was involved in Nazi Germany or any of the sympathetic states.

So quite honestly, if they didn't give a damn it would be well within their rights. Take that argument up with the people who actually committed the crimes.

There is a reason why out of all the "Western" people, white Americans are especially attached to Israel. Israel is a little America. America was founded in large part by persons escaping persecution in Europe. They were tired of being harassed by the Church for having the gall to interpret the Bible differently. They set sail for that rumored land over the sea where they could make a fresh start. Of course the problem was that people already lived there. Undeterred these colonists decided that the people living in the "Americas" were backward heathens who's purpose prior to their arrival was to prep the land for them. Their vision of Christianity moralized the subsequent theft of land, relocation, reservations and genocide as the white man's burden.

Today a great deal of white America sees the current republic as a testament to the rightness of such manifest destiny ideology and I believe the story of Israel stirs the same primal "patriot" emotions. Israel being founded by Europeans seeking to relieve themselves of the oppression of Christian, Anti-Semitic Europe, went and grabbed land clearly inhabited by other people. They stole their property, created reservations, broken treaties, etc. Clearly Israel is a little Jewish America. Cohen, who I will assume is an American, therefore has a double dose of this white manifest mentality and it shows.

Lastly, there is an absurdity to Cohen talking about 1946 Poland. That's like a black guy going into a Starbucks and looking for the Negro section of the store. How one whips out some 50 odd year old event as proof that European Jews ought to stay put in occupied Palestine is beyond dumb.

Let me take the time to respond to the asinine comparison made in the comments section of the offending article where some prick asked if it is not OK to tell Blacks to go back to Africa, then....

Stop.

Africans in America, recent immigrants aside, did not come here voluntarily.
We did not get a papal bull, Company Charter or UN mandate to come to America and appropriate land inhabited by other people.

So enough with the black people comparisons.

In the end Cohen's piece is irrelevant. Had Cohen simply decided to discuss past atrocities in Europe and perhaps how they may be avoided if Jews did return to such places, you know, a useful discussion, and left the attack on Helen Thomas out I wouldn't have much to say. But his opening attack on Thomas, and by extension those who agree with her reveals the piece for what it is, a propaganda piece to justify the settler state that is Israel. Besides what happened in Poland is particularly irrelevant for those Jews in Israel who came from the US. What's their excuse?

Legal Jim Crow

There’s reason for the preacher’s strong language. In the fourth chapter (titled “The Cruel Hand”) of The New Jim Crow, Alexander shows how once you’re branded as a felon, all the “old forms of discrimination – employment discrimination, housing discrimination, denial of the right to vote, denial of educational opportunity, denial of food stamps and other public benefits, and exclusion from jury service – are suddenly legal. As a criminal,” Alexander observes, “you have scarcely more rights, and arguably less respect, than a black man living in Alabama at the height of Jim Crow.”[2]

The One's Sitting in Your Face

A bit before Slim Thugg decided to represent "nawfside" and make mostly unsupportable claims in a Vibe magazine interview, I had a thought going through my head that I had refused to post. However; since it has found it's way into my face I suppose it is my Karma to put it out there. I'll use their words though:

Most of us know a beautiful, intelligent, 30-something black woman who swears she can't find a man, in spite of the fact that she might likely know several men who would marry her at the drop of a dime. In some cases, her perception of the perfect man is elevated to the point that every man she meets misses the mark (except for unavailable ones).

-Black Voices

And I will add that many men fall into that same thing as well.

Let me state that there are two reasons for this. Firstly I've come to the conclusion that a lot of people simply do not understand how attraction works. A lot of these good men that women overlook are simply not "attractive" to them. Perhaps they lack "swagger" perhaps they are simply not physically attractive to her. Who am I to tell a woman she ought to lay up with a man who turns her stomach just because he has a decent job and worships the ground she walks on?

But getting back to the 'swagger" issue, the thing about that is, when it comes down to it. When the babies are made, the mortgages are due, the homework to be checked and the PTA meeting to attend, Swagger really doesn't mean too much.

Where I live there are a number of Indian families. The women generally stay home and take care of the children and the men go outside the home and earn. No I am not promoting this. The majority of these men have no swagger whatsoever. I'm talking white socks under dress slacks and black shoes. I'm talking "walk funny". I'm talking all the stuff that would mark your average negro as "boring as fuck".

What these fellows all have in common though is dedication to family and a hell of a work ethic. Though I haven't actually asked any of the women, I would suppose that they chose, or their parents chose for them, their husbands for the qualities that made him a good husband and not a good entertainer.

I'll be honest and say that I've passed on some women for reasons that were purely selfish and had no real bearing on their value as a wife or mother and similarly I think there are not a few women who have passed on men for reasons that have nothing to do with what they claim they want long term in a husband.

If we're not honest with ourselves about the choices we make, we will end up 40, wondering what the hell happened and fail to realize that we are most likely single due to the decisions we made and not for the lack of "good" men and women available to us.

Bizarro World

Israel just finished killing civilians in open/international waters and what's on the front page of the NYT?

U.S. Presses Its Case Against Iran Ahead of Sanctions Vote

And then we wonder why people fly planes into buildings and leave bombs in Times Square, NYC.

The Public Erasure of Black Women in Brazil

One recurring theme on my Twitter timeline, thanks to one Kola Boof is the marginalization of black women. And let me be clear, I am talking about those dark, hershey dark chocolate skinned women with tightly coiled hair. I'm talking those thick lipped, wide nosed and sometimes gapped in the front teeth black women.

OK?

It is clear to most who observe this phenomenon that the mass media has a Scale of Acceptable Blackness (tm) that is used for black women in particular. At the top of the scale are those who can pass. Next are those who can't pass for what is nominally "white" but who have "white features" such as narrow noses (which is not only the domain of white people but that's another discussion) and relatively small lips.

Right under this group are darker women with same features. with each shade acceptable so long as the nose and lips are relatively thin and the hair stays permed. There are a few exceptions.

Few. Particularly in the modeling world. Which brings me to the point of this post. This morning in the NYT I found a piece about Brazilian models :

RESTINGA SÊCA, Brazil — Before setting out in a pink S.U.V. to comb the schoolyards and shopping malls of southern Brazil, Alisson Chornak studies books, maps and Web sites to understand how the towns were colonized and how European their residents might look today.

The goal, he and other model scouts say, is to find the right genetic cocktail of German and Italian ancestry, perhaps with some Russian or other Slavic blood thrown in. Such a mix, they say, helps produce the tall, thin girls with straight hair, fair skin and light eyes that Brazil exports to the runways of New York, Milan and Paris with stunning success.

In a country that is at least 50% non-white, these photographers go to the least populated areas to find the whitest of the white to represent Brazil on the world stage.

Clóvis Pessoa studies facial traits that are successful on international runways and looks for towns in the south that mirror those genes.

“If a famous top model looks German with a Russian nose, I will do a scientific study and look for cities that were colonized by Germans and Russians in the south of Brazil in order to get a similar face down here," Mr. Pessoa said.

What struck me (and almost made me lose my oatmeal) was this:

The next morning, Mr. Chornak studied the girls returning with red lollipops from recess. “There is nothing special here,” he declared.

Really?

I haven't seen what this fellow was looking for, but when I'm in the supermarket in queens, frequented by many black people of varied nationalities I run across "model material" every week. Women who would simply blow away the young lady shown in the NYT video.

Blow away. Even with her hair in rollers.

It is so sad to see how blinded these men are by visions of whiteness as inherently beautiful that they choose "ordinary" white women over 11 on a scale of 10 black women.

Oh and the other insult. Advising one girl to stay out of the sun and wear sunblock when she has to work outside. That would be shocking had I not known a light skinned African-American woman who was essentially told the same thing by her boyfriend who was from Trinidad.

In any case it's very sad that a small portion of Brazil with actual no genetic makeup that reflects the country of origin can be "most desirable".

Of course Brazil is a country that had a lightening up policy so I suppose this type of stuff should not come as a surprise.

Garvey's Ghost TV 6-7-2010

Part 1 is been tagged by YouTube for copyright violation even though the clip in question doesn't even BELONG to the so called "copyright holder". You'll have to follow the link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D_ar145bHkI

Part 2 below. But really you need to watch part 1 first. Really. So much so I won't embed the video until this "dispute" is finished with. Whenever that is.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lX47fRj2wbE

The Only Way He Could Get Her Attention?

Timothy Johnson told the officers, according to their report, "I admit it. I hit her, that's the only way I can get her attention." Felix-Johnson told the officers he restrained her on the couch, holding down her neck. One officer reports Ofelia Felix-Johnson saying that Johnson also punched her breasts, saying that she had no heart, and hit her over the back and buttocks with a plastic shoe rack, breaking the rack. The police report in the court file states that Johnson broke his wife's nose and toes, causing her to be hospitalized.

What the he'll? Republicans let this fool actually represent them?
Alternet

Garvey's Ghost TV 5-24-2010

What Rand Paul Would Likely Get Right

Here’s Maddow, brandishing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as though this is the only matter worth considering in the forthcoming race between Rand Paul and the Democrat, an awful neo-liberal prosecutor, Kentucky’s current attorney general, Jack "I'm a Tough Son-of-a-Bitch" Conway. Between Conway and Paul, which one in the U.S. Senate would more likely be a wild card – which is the best we can hope for these days – likely to filibuster against a bankers’ bailout, against reaffirmation of the Patriot Act, against suppression of the CIA’s full torture history? Paul, one would have to bet, and these are the votes that count, where one uncompromising stand by an outsider can make a difference, unlike the gyrations and last-ditch sell-outs of Blowhard Bernie Sanders, no doubt a hero to Maddow and Goodman. Liberals love grandstanding about what are, in practice, distractions. You think the Civil Rights Act of 1964 is going to come up for review in the U.S. Senate?

Yup.

Counterpunch

In Other News

Felipe Calderon speaks out against the recent law passed in Arizona because of how it "affects his people".

Barack Obama, in the wake of reports of black people stopped and frisked in NYC for making "furtive movements" "looking criminal" or just plain "other" is reported to have said absolutely nothing.


Al Sharpton apparently approves of Obama's silence.

Police State in NYC

Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report lays it out:

Why has New York created a police state for Blacks and Latinos? Because the powers-that-be think that a voting majority of citizens approve, and because Black and brown leadership are in the pockets of those in power.

Garvey's Ghost TV 5-10-2010

RIP a Real Black Man

In an age where black men with guns usually point and discharge them at each other, we ought to give respect for one of a few who knew how to properly use one. Robert Hicks of the Deacons for Defense the precursors to the Black Panther Party for Self Defense.

A Bogalusa Deacon pulled a pistol in broad daylight during a protest march in 1965 and put two bullets into a white man who had attacked him with his fists.

Arizona Is NYC

The new anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona has brought the usual suspects from both the right and the left. Much of what I've read, particularly from the left has been shrill and non-analytical. It's too bad because the Arizona law is a great opportunity for progressives and particularly black activists to bring up a host of issues that have been conveniently ignored. However; before I get into that let me lay out a few things:

It is, I believe, the height of hypocrisy for certain people on the left to discuss how opposition to illegal immigration is equal to being anti-immigrant. It is a totally false comparison, bad logic and is purposefully intellectually dishonest. Are there in fact persons who are anti-immigrant, particularly Mexican immigration. Absolutely. You want to point those persons out? Go right ahead. However the gross generalization that to be against illegal immigration is to be anti-immigrant is a false generalization and ought to be excised from left arguments

Furthermore on the point of hypocrisy, I doubt that any of the persons who apparently have no problem with persons entering the country via illegal means would be so happy if random persons simply entered their homes without their invitation and refused to leave and demanded a lease to stay there. So let's stop with the two-facedness on the subject.

Every country on the planet has some kind of immigration policy. Some tougher than others. Since we are focusing on Mexico let me tell you that they have pretty tough immigration laws there. Ask anyone from central America who's tried to reach the US via Mexico and gotten caught. So every and any country has the right to determine the legal means by which a non-citizen may enter and stay in the country.

Oh and there's my favorite: Undocumented immigrant. I love that one. It's like calling a trespasser on private property an "undocumented walker." They just didn't get around to getting the permission of the property owner to be on said property. Good luck using that argument in court. Dude I didn't steal the car. I just hadn't gotten the documents from the owner yet. So having covered that, again, lets get to the Arizona law and why it just may stand up to court scrutiny.


I was very interested in Obama's response to the passing of the Arizona law. He didn't come right out and call it profiling. I am certain that he discussed this with the AG. This morning I discovered why. A piece in the NY Times discussed the Federal law covering immigrants:

The state’s new immigration enforcement law is designed to mirror federal immigration laws. Federal law already requires aliens to register and carry their documents with them. The new Arizona law simply does the same thing. Because illegal immigrants are by definition in violation of federal immigration laws, they can now be arrested.

I am certain that most of the people who are against the Arizona law had no clue about the federal requirement of legal immigrants to carry their papers on them at all times. I didn't know this at all, but thinking back on it, all my immigrant family members, prior to them getting citizenship always carried their "green card". Now I know why. I believe this is why Obama spoke as he did on the subject. He knew (or had been informed just prior to) that Arizona law was a copy of federal law, except the Arizona law had "teeth". Since it is already a requirement of immigrants to walk with proof of documentation, the only thing left to argue about is the means by which Arizona has chosen to enforce immigration law.

What Arizona law enables their police to do is to stop people on "reasonable suspicion" of being an illegal immigrant. When I heard that I knew it sounded familiar. No I didn't have flashbacks to South Africa or Stars of David on German Jews. No I thought of present day NYC. It has been a habit (by which I mean official policy) of police in NYC to stop and frisk African-American men for years now. Just this last year 500,000 people have been stopped and frisked, including asking for ID, by the NYPD while they were going about their business. Channel 7 News has recently had exposes with both a whistleblower police officer and a citizen with a video camera, showing that the "reasonable suspicion" were things like "furtive movements" and the usual "driving the wrong kind of car: AKA: A 'rimmed up' car".

The police have searched these men and in 95% of the cases no contraband (drugs or weapons) are found. In some cases persons have been tricked into making incriminating statements or revealing that they had small amounts of weed on them.

All the time this has been going on, not too many people had shit to say. These black and brown men, citizens of the United States have been having their civil rights violated multiple times with the full knowledge of those in authority. As far as I know there hasn't been a campaign to enforce these individuals civil liberties as citizens to not be accosted by police. No presidential commentary. No mass protests. Not much of anything outside the circles that include this author.

The reasons given by the NYPD for this blatant violation of the rights of citizens:

"We're targeting high crime areas."
"We use 'quality of life' enforcement in order to keep a lid on crime."

Sound familiar? It is exactly the same reasoning we hear for the Arizona law. Illegal immigration is a crime. A federal one at that. So in order to combat this "crime" we will stop people "at random" or who exhibit "behavior or clothing associated with illegal immigration" as a means of preventing these crimes.

At this point, you the reader should see where I'm going with this. If courts are OK with stopping citizens across the country for stuff like "you made a lane change without your blinkers" or straight up "you look like you may have weed", then how is a court going to strike down a law that allows police in Arizona (or elsewhere) to stop those they believe to be aliens who may be in violation of immigration law? Certainly it cannot be argued that illegal immigrants are above being treated like the citizens are being treated in NYC.

So in a sense getting mad about Arizona is short sighted. There is a web of laws that are used to profile and harass citizens that go unchallenged that provide the legal precedent for the Arizona law. I'll give another example of why the Arizona law will probably withstand challenge.

in 2000 during the Puerto Rican day parade in NY some men got out of hand and sexually assaulted a number of women. There was a lot of press over this at the time. There was video of the incident and the police had determined that the perpetrators of this crime were African-American and Latino men. They decided that the best way to catch these men who appeared on tape, was to put police check points on every exit of the FDR below 23rd street on the following friday. I was headed to the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and had to exit at the 14th street exit (now closed) where I was told to pull over. All females were allowed to pass by. I was detained and asked to provide identification which was compared to the photos of the suspects. Had I committed a crime? No. Had I driven in a manner that broke any NYS motor vehicle laws? No. I was stopped and profiled simply because I was black and male. Period.

Similarly the legal argument Arizona will use to defend it's law is that illegal immigration is a crime. 90% of the suspects of this particular "crime" are Mexican. We are not "racially profiling" we are simply following good enforcement tactics by targeting those that "fit the data" which "includes race" but also takes into account "other signs".

Just like they do in NYC.

By the time I get to Arizona

Planet Grenada:

Garvey's Ghost TV 4-26-2010

Part 1:



Part 2:


Part 3:

The Middle Class Game is Up

A fine quote from a good read in Alternet:

The guy in front of the flat screen in Cedar Rapids, Iowa doesn't even have to stop and think to draw the corpo-state approved conclusion Anderson delivers. It's instantaneous into his deep reptilian brain: "Hatians fucked. Iraqis fucked. Greeks fucked. Me live in best place of all."

Immigration and African- Americans

Long ago I posted a piece showing that illegal immigration had a negative impact on American wages and argued that the job opportunities for blacks at the lower end of the employment scale were being negatively impacted. It was not a popular post but I provided evidence for it. Now we have more documentation on this issue.

The findings are published in the journal "Social Forces."
Professor Edward Shihadeh and Ph.D. Candidate Raymond Barranco conclude the arrival of large numbers of immigrant workers in an urban area displaces blacks from low-skill jobs. That, in turn, leads to an uptick in violence.

I will repeat the sentiments of the paper's author that this ought not be seen as an attack on immigrants legal or otherwise, but ewe should not allow patently false claims in regards to the impact on black communities go unchallenged.

WDSU

A Queen in Nigeria

Hajiya had one wife-beating case early in her reign.

"I told him if he ever beat his wife again, I'd dissolve the marriage and put him in prison," she remembers. "Marriage is not a joke, and women are not slaves."

Since that case, she has made a point of campaigning against domestic violence whenever she holds court in local communities. She says she's never had another beating case. People know where she stands.

"Men sometimes say the women provoke them, so that is why they beat them," she says. "I tell them that there's no justification, whatever happens."

If a girl is miserable in an arranged marriage, the queen listens to her side of the story, even though she dislikes divorce.

"In such cases I try to strike a balance. I don't just end such marriages. I try to be tactful and see if there's any way this woman can come to love this man," she says. "But if that's not possible, if there's no way she can have any compassion for him or love, it's not her fault or his fault. It's just natural.

This passage reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend. We were discussing marriage and how (in her case in Islamic societies) marriage is more about an arrangement and "obligation" rather than some romanticized love relationship. Not that those marriages were/are without love, but that "love" as is understood in "the west" was not the centerpiece of the relationship.

Anyway, a decent read.

LA Times

Garvey's Ghost TV 4-12-2010

Part 1:


Part 2:

UV Protection

Honestly I had thought of similarly themed commercials.

For Hip Hop News & Entertainment at DimeWars.Com

African American Unemployment 19%

What’s even worse is the outlook for African-American men. The unemployment rate for Black men in March was 19%. That’s up from 17.8% last month and 16.4% this time last year. The unemployment rate for Black women in March was 12.4%.

Dallas South Blog

Japanese-African children in the Congo

From Dime-Wars via France 24:

For Hip Hop News & Entertainment at DimeWars.Com

Garvey's Ghost TV 3-29-2010

Truth or Fantasy

Paul Craig Roberts writes on a theme that has been on my mind for a few weeks now.

Today Americans are ruled by propaganda. Americans have little regard for truth, little access to it, and little ability to recognize it...

Truth is inconvenient for ideologues.

When Blair told the House Intelligence Committee that US citizens no longer needed to be arrested, charged, tried, and convicted of a capital crime, just murdered on suspicion alone of being a “threat,” he wasn’t impeached. No investigation pursued. Nothing happened. There was no Church Committee. In the mid-1970s the CIA got into trouble for plots to kill Castro. Today it is American citizens who are on the hit list. Whatever objections there might be don’t carry any weight. No one in government is in any trouble over the assassination of U.S. citizens by the U.S. government.

And this does not apply simply to those in government.

Counterpunch

Dominican follow up

A good follow up post on the subject. A documentary on "latin-America's" African roots. Two issues I have with the trailer:

1) While many of the Indigenous people were killed, they were not simply wiped out as we know it here in the States even though they are made to be invisible.

2) object to referring to Africans as "Latinos/as." as was done in the trailer. I know what they mean but my previous post underscores why I don't like calling African people anything other than.

English Trailer for AfroLatinos The Documentary from Renzo Devia / Creador Pictures on Vimeo.

Dominicans and Race

Just too much here to even begin discussion. Let quotes from the piece speak for itself:

"If you're working in a bank, you don't want some barrio-looking hair. Straight hair looks elegant," the bank teller said. "It's not that as a person of color I want to look white. I want to look pretty."


"With time passing, I see I'm not black. I'm Latina.


The practice continued under President Joaquín Balaguer, who often complained that Haitians were "darkening'' the country. In the 1990s, he was blamed for thwarting the presidential aspirations of leading black candidate José Francisco Peña Gómez by spreading rumors that he was actually Haitian.

When migrant-rights activist Sonia Pierre won the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Award in 2006, the government responded by trying to revoke her citizenship, saying she is actually Haitian.

"I cannot take the bus because people pull my hair and stick combs in it," said wavy haired performance artist Xiomara Fortuna. "They ask me if I just got out of prison. People just don't want that image to be seen."

"You should see how they come in here with their big asses!'' she said, shuffling across her office with her arms extended behind her back, simulating an enormous rear-end. "They come in here thinking they are all that, and I think, 'doesn't she know she's not really pretty?' "

"Look, we have bad hair, bad. Nobody says 'curly.' It's bad," she said. "You can't go out like that. People will say, 'Look at that nest! Someone light a match!' ''

"I had people on the streets . . . yell at me to get out of the sun because I was already black enough," she said. "It was hurtful. . . . I was raised in the South and thought I could handle any racial comment. I never before experienced anything like I did in the Dominican Republic.

Miami Herald

Charter School Debate

A Room for Debate piece in the NYT contained the following reader comment that I think sums up the issue with charter schools:

The paramount duty of public schools is to support a democratic and economically mobile society by educating all students who walk in the door, regardless of their race, income, gender, disability, OR parents' willingness to support education. As soon as a school is allowed to say: parents need to fill out an application, parents need to sign this homework and attendance contract, parents need to volunteer x hours a year in the school, then it fails to be a public school. Yes, children do better in school if their parents are more involved. No, it is not ethical to create a two-tiered education system in which some American children are doubly punished for their parents' uninvolvement: first, through a lack of support at home and second, through being served in a "separate but unequal" school.

Crooks

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Wealth Follow up

Taking a break, I happened to have the "wealth study" paper up on my screen with the following paragraph:

Young women ages 18-35, whether white or non-white, are beginning their adult years with a median wealth of zero, meaning that at least half of women in this age group had no wealth or had debts greater than the value of their assets (see Table 3). However, while white women in the prime working years of ages 36-49 have a median wealth of $42,600 (still only 61% of their white male counterparts), the median wealth for women of color is only $5. Prior to age 50, women of color have virtually no wealth. Moreover, in comparison to their same-sex white counterparts, women of color in the two youngest age groups, have less than 1% of the wealth of white women whereas men of color in these same age groups under 50 have 18% and 16% of the wealth of white men.

See anything wrong? No? Let me point it out.

Notice that at the beginning of the paragraph the authors state that women 18-35 have a median wealth of $0. The explicitly state that "at least half of women in this age group had no wealth or had debts greater than the value of their assets (see Table 3)"

But later in the paragraph they change the language. They say:

"Prior to age 50, women of color have virtually no wealth."

If they had used the same language as they did in the beginning of the paragraph they would have written:

Prior to age 50, at least half of the women of color of this age group have virtually no wealth.

So clearly the authors wanted to make a point exaggerating the levels of wealth (or lack thereof) of black women. Why? the sentence as written implies that women of color age 50,have no wealth. But the actual data shows that half the women of color have $5 median wealth.

This is clearly a case of "massaging" the info to make a statement. That paragraph ought not to have made it past editorial review.

Spec-i-fic-i-ty

[Update: My math was wrong when I wrote:

Being married to or cohabitating with a black man raises the median net wealth of black women by 31X.

The actual multiple is 310x since single black woman's median wealth was posted as $100 and married/cohabitating black couples are at $31,000. So 310 x 100 == 31,000. The body text has been changed to reflect the correct numbers]



Last week during the epic black male privilege and porn argument I suggested that people read my old post Note To The So Called POC Revolutionaries
which contains this relevant piece of advice:

3) Spec-i-fic-i-ty: This is the exact opposite of the Generalization problem. I recall Professor Fluker of Tuskegee University saying that one needed to be specific. I didn't quite catch on until some years after. Some months ago I was in court on a speeding ticket and overheard a lawyer advising his client. He stated that the law said "xyz AND..abc" The "and" being the critical statement in the case. Specificity allows you to control a conversation by defining the terms. Your ability to make a clear and specific argument is going to be your "trump card" in most arguments. It is almost inevitable that those that oppose you will fall into pitfalls 5 and 7 above in an attempt to smear you. But because they are stupid enough to fall into pitfalls 5 and 7 you will be able to counter them with little energy on your part. At best you want terms defined in a manner that is clear to everyone AND that can be universally agreed upon. Avoid making up new terms or defining terms with contradictory words It would be best if your defined word can be broken up etymologically and still stand or you may find yourself playing the word game which is not only a distraction but will cause you to waste time defending to anyone but your "yes friends."

and

7) Mistaking what you want to be the case for being the case: I think this is a huge problem. So many people think that what they would like to be reality is in fact reality. For example, with the Duke issue. If rape is defined legally as involuntary vaginal intercourse don't have a discussion on the subject as if rape was legally defined as anything else. If you want to have a hypothetical discussion in which rape is legally defined as something else then have that conversation, but don't get mad at people who are having a conversation with things clearly defined. Another example, Islam allowed for slavery. So did Christianity, Judaism and just about every other religion. There are all kinds of people who get all bent out of shape because they choose to wish such things away. Don't be one of those people. The road to changing systems or even replacing them, is understanding what they are.

This is not a porn discussion though. This is about an article and the tweets it inspired.

On Tuesday a twit arrived in my twitter client proclaiming: "Study finds Median Wealth for Single Black Women at $5". I was immediately skeptical. I read the long article where this statement was made and looked for a link to the original academic paper. It wasn't there. Just a chart taken from it. After a quick search I found the piece and you can find it here:

http://www.insightcced.org/uploads/CRWG/LiftingAsWeClimb-InsightCenter-Spring2010.pdf


Reading the paper I discovered something important. The headline claim was never stated in the paper. The paper said:

Single, Non-white and/or hispanic women between the ages of 36 and 49 have a median net worth of $5 (their male counterparts have $1,100). Now that's a bad statistic and doesn't need spin in order to make an impact. But a few things need to be discussed:

1) Non-white and/or hispanic includes Black women, Hispanic women of any racial group, Native-American, etc. Nothing in the paper breaks out black women for this particular statistic.

2) Median vs. Mean: a lot of people mistake median and

-10,-9,-7,-6,0,5,10,11,12,13,14

The mean is 3.
The median is 5.

In this case the average is lower than the median. In reference to the report the median wealth of single Black women in particular could be less than $5.

we could look at this differently. lets look at this example:

Three people. One is $40k in the hole 'cause they have an expensive car note. The second has $0 net wealth cause they have a small income and equivalent debts (hand to mouth). And the third has a net worth of $100k due to their owning a home and having paid for their vehicle.

-40,000, 0, 100,000

The median net worth of this group is $0.

Alarming.

The mean for this same group is: $20,000.

Not so alarming....maybe.

Clearly no one in the group has an actual net wealth of $20k but arithmetically that is the average and it is way higher than the median.

Now in these kinds of papers there is weighting and other things that I'm not at all proficient in, but it still stands that looking at the report you have to be careful about what overall conclusions one extrapolates from the data.

Another way of looking at this is this: Say there is a report that crime in NYC is down 50%. Great! But what if you live in a part of NYC that has high crime? That drop in crime may not mean much to you when there is still have random gunfire going on in your neighborhood. Hence we have to realize that statistics are only valid for the group it studies.

So that's my first issue with how this report has been presented. My next issue has to do with the conclusions drawn and is more opinion than anything else.

Page 4 of the report has a chart that shows the net median wealth of people by household type and race. That chart shows that single Black women have a median net wealth of $100 ($5,000 if vehicle is included. I wouldn't). Single Black men have a median net wealth of $7,900 ($12,600 if vehicles are included). A stark difference indeed. The next group is highly instructive though.

Black men and women who are cohabitating or married have a median net wealth of $31,500 ($46,900 if vehicles are included). This is something that I believe ought to be front and center of this discussion. Being married to or cohabitating with a black man raises the median net wealth of black women by 310X.

That. is. HUGE.

By not being married to, or cohabitating with a black man, black women are being deprived of $31,400 in wealth. I cannot fathom how anyone who advocates for black women to "do them" and how they "don't need no man" is even tolerated since it is statistically clear that getting with a black man "medianly" has an extreme economic benefit to black women. So rather than headline the report that "single black women have five bucks" which wasn't even written in the report, the headline ought to have been:

marriage increases black women's wealth 310X!

But that is a headline that would promote black families and would *gasp* link financial wealth of black women with that of black men; something taboo in certain quarters.


Which brings me to my third issue with the report and it's journey around the internet. While the statistics look pretty bad, it also shows a number of things:

1) Half of single Black women in the study have a median net worth over $5.

2) Promoting marriage (or at least cohabitation) between black men and women should be promoted as a means of increasing the overall median wealth of black people in general.

3) Since childcare is possibly the second or third largest expense for single parents efforts ought to be made to

a) Keep black parents together.
b) Increase the income of the male partner so that childcare expenses can be eliminated for the family unit. This is not going to be popular among a set of black women because they believe that they should be a career woman and mother, even though they leave the majority of "mothering" to other people. Of course we have stay at home fathers as well. However; according to the statistics here, a stay at home father is a waste of wealth.

Now looking at those who are at or below $5 we have to ask how this can be the case. Go back to my example of the person with the $40k car. They are in the hole because of their debts. There are a lot of people rolling around with debt that they really don't need to have. We covered child care. That is a huge burden on any family and negatively affects net wealth.

Since Black women are entering and graduating from institutions of higher education at a rate higher than Black men, we have to take into consideration the cost of that education. If you've taken out loans to cover 4-5 years of undergrad, it is likely you have 20, 30,40 thousand or more in debt at age 23. That debt isn't going to up and disappear in 2 years either. A lot of people enter their 30's with university debt and add to that automobile debt, credit card debt, Rent, etc. So for even educated black women, the debts start early. Should they decide to "go it alone" with a child early on as well, then that only adds to the wealth problem.

If a smaller proportion of black men are not going to expensive university, but instead less expensive trade school then it stands to reason they enter their adult years with less education debt to service. On the other hand if black men are able to get paid more in the workplace because they are men or that the jobs available to them are higher paying, then that also affects the wealth gap.

So what are some take away lessons here:

1) Black people need to be aware of their finances. Black girls and boys ought to be taught early on how to deal with their money. How to project income and expenses and how to do long term financial planning.

2) College graduates ought to have 2 things at the top of their minds. 1) paying off student loans as soon as possible, 2) Securing a life partner.

By doing these two things black people would see exponential wealth growth.

Of course there is always the route of blaming black men and complaining about white people.

Sanitation in Haiti

From Counterpunch

In Petionville the two main squares are now home to over 13,000 people and only 15 portable toilets. Imagine if there are 866 people per toilet and 720 minutes in the day, that would mean that for everyone to use the toilet once a day there would be less than 1 minute per person. Also at the rate the toilets are being used, they need to be emptied every day and there are currently not enough desludging trucks in Port au Prince to service all of the toilets being installed. When the toilets are emptied they are taken to a new site set up by the government which is in the middle of the city dump. To get to the site you pass through piles of burning garbage the size of football fields. Hundreds of people come to the dump every day to scavenge for pieces of metal, and firewood. At the end of the steaming garbage there are 4 pits, dug shortly after the earthquake. The sludge from the toilets is dumped into or near the pits where it is mixed with all kinds of garbage and medical wastes. Now only 1 month after the holes were dug they are full and every day the amount of human wastes coming out of the camps is increasing.

Dan Rather's "Watermelon" Pass

I think some people are going to try to go in on Dan Rather over the following:

RATHER: When you talk about a triumph though. One, part of the undertow in the coming election is going to be President Obama's leadership. And the Republicans will make a case and a lot of independents will buy this argument. "Listen he just hasn't been, look at the health care bill. It was his number one priority. It took him forever to get it through and he had to compromise it to death." And a version of, "Listen he's a nice person, he's very articulate" this is what's been used against him, "but he couldn't sell watermelons if it, you gave him the state troopers to flag down the traffic."

I'll admit my first reaction to that was along the lines of what I said on an episode of Garvey's Ghost TV But then re-reading the piece it is clear that Dan Rather is suggesting what Republicans may be saying given their previous rhetoric regarding Obama. The key statement being:

And a version of,

Sometimes that yellow thing walking isn't a duck.

Sure They Can Have E-Mail

Ars Technica

The US Treasury Department today relaxed export regulations against Iran, Sudan, and Cuba, allowing US companies to provide instant messaging, e-mail, and social networking services to those countries. The goal is to ensure that citizens can "exercise their most basic rights," said Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin.

And not because we'd like to be able to intercept internet communication that goes through US based servers of these US based companies. No. Not that.

Follow up on Nigerian Riots

In January, Rev. Kwashi argued in an essay for Christianity Today magazine — headlined, “In Jos We Are Coming Face to Face in Confrontation with Satan” — that violence in the region was not motivated by religious differences, writing: “those who have in the past used violence to settle political issues, economic issues, social matters, intertribal disagreements, or any issue for that matter, now continue to use that same path of violence and cover it up with religion.”

Islamic values have much in common with traditional African life: its emphasis on communal living, its clear roles for men and women, its tolerance of polygamy. Christianity, Muslims argue, was alien to most Africans. [...]

“The Muslims are winning — they have won,” said the Rev. Benjamin Kwashi, 46, the Anglican bishop of Jos, a city in central Nigeria where at least 500 people were killed in clashes between Muslims and Christians in September. “Islam is growing very fast. For many Africans, it makes more sense to reject America and Europe’s secular values, a culture of selfishness and half-naked women, by embracing Islam.”

Question: If Islam is supposedly more amenable to "African life" and Africans want to keep their "African lives" why not reject both Christianity AND Islam and just practice their own shit?

500 dead in Nigeria Riot

DAKAR, Senegal — Officials and human rights groups in Nigeria said Monday that about 500 people had died in weekend ethnic violence near the central city of Jos, considerably more than what had initially been reported.

A government spokesman said Sunday that the dead numbered more than 300. The victims were Christians killed by rampaging Muslim herdsmen, officials and human rights workers said, apparently in reprisal for similar attacks on Muslims in January...

Many appeared to have been cut down with machetes after being driven from homes set ablaze by attackers in the predawn darkness, said Shamaki Gad Peter of the League for Human Rights, a Nigerian group.

NY Times

Yet Another Follow Up

Wow. Shannon has written some more. Personally I think the subject has gotten far more attention than it should have but hey it's a slow news day.

Like my cat, I'm bored. Yawning even. I suppose I can entertain myself with this some more. Again, unlike Shannon, I will respond directly to what she said, not what I tawt I taw.

So...like her previous piece Shannon starts off again with the name calling. You would think that Shannon would cease and desist with that immature behavior.

You'd think.

Let's mock this dumbass!

Oh yeah. Lets name call. Lets encourage other people to name call. Never mind that he took on my piece paragraph by paragraph. Never mind that he never named called me. Never mind that he didn't misquote me. Lets name call.

I told ya'll it's usually a bad sign when the piece starts with name calling. It's almost as if she wants to publicly verify what I said. Anyway let's proceed...again.

He blows a lot of hot air about porn, completely ignoring that porn is ACTING. A PERFORMANCE. A HUGE ASS INDUSTRY. THAT WHEN THE REST OF US GET BUSY, WE GOTTA GO AND GET FOLKS TO UNLEARN THIS BS.

Where did I say that porn is definitively not acting? Did Shanon even bother to go through my public twitter timeline and see what I actually wrote? No. Let me do this bit of elemental research for her:

Mr Tunji
12 hours ago
@drgoddess back to intimacy: A) Porn (with the exception of the homemade variety) is staged. The clueless don't get that.

So where did Shannon get the idea that I don't know that a lot of porn is in fact staged? She made it up. Why would she do that? More importantly why are her peers allowing her to do that?

Secondly you'll note that I made an exception for the "homemade" variety. Ordinary people who decided to set up a camera in their homes, hotels, cars, whatever and did whatever it is they want to do and posted it on the internet. Scary thought that people actually have the freedom to do that kind of stuff isn't it? I'd post the proof but I don't want my blog being an entry point for that material. Let's get back to Shannon.

Nobody made anyone perform in blackface, either, but I'm not going to accept that it's all cool and non problematic.

Oh! An attempted race-gender intersection. She knows kung-fu!

Here's the problem with that move. The express purpose of blackface (performed by whites or blacks) was to make a characature of black people by presenting them in a way that the do not look and by showing them behaving in a manner which they did not actually behave. In the blackface era, these were the only representations of black people and deemed the definitive representation of black folk. To summarize it was a product of a completely false constructed social universe.

Now lets look at porn. Do men and women have sex? Yes they do. Porn reflects that. Does porn reduce women to a single stereotype. No. Oh you need that explained? Sure: You have fat porn and skinny porn. Old lady porn, Young lady porn? Short people porn, tall people porn. Fake bodies porn, real bodies porn. Male as dominant porn, Male as submissive porn. There is no one single type of porn like there was archetypical black face. Black face was only black face, huge red lips, white bug eyes and broken english.

But even with that. As much as I oppose blackface and do not participate in it, I defend the right of people to make blackface movies and for people to consume it. I simply will not be one of them. I'll go even further. I think the antics of Flavor Flav in flavor of love (there's a porn take off on it) is modern day coonin' blackface without the ink. None other than Chuck D has defended Flav for having the right to go and coon. He doesn't agree with it but clearly sees that Flav has the right to "do flav". We have the right to not consume.

Back to Shannon:

I understand that some people think anything with sex in it is saved from comment. Me? No fucking way.

Some people may. But I'm not one of those "some people". It appears that Shannon can read so I'll redirect her attention back to the original piece where I objected to the proposition that black men's access to porn was a privilege. I object to that statement because it is demonstrably not true and because it passes judgment on the tastes of persons involved. We can comment all we want on people's proclivities but at the end of the day what consenting adults decide to do and consume is their business. If Shannon has a problem with that then Shannon has a problem with personal freedom.

More from the trove of "stuff I didn't say":

Just because porn depicts people performing sex acts doesn't mean that we can't be like "dude, she's faking it.

Didn't say it. SO she can't be referring to me.

And I bet she doesn't actually do that in the bedroom.

I would assume that which someone is willing to do on camera, sexually, one is willing to do away from a camera. I bet that Shannon is projecting her own objections onto other people too. She seems to be good at it.

And now onto the trove of supposition and "can't bother to spell his name correctly":

And when guys that Sonjata or whatever say that they really think this is about two people in the bedroom, that they just woke up one day and decided to make a sex tape, that creeps me out.

Did I misspell Shannon's name? Did I? Copy-Paste? Heard of it. Anyway, let me clue in Shannon. I am "on tape". And yes me and the woman I was with decided out of the blue, in the middle of the day to tape ourselves. We watched it after. Really. Stop assuming you know what and why people do things. Seriously. Shannon has absolutely no clue as to what she is saying. No clue. Not only that but who cares if she's creeped out by that? Why is Shannon so self-centered. Who cares what she thinks. Is she on the tape? No. Then back off.

You can't say don't judge people's bedrooms when the windows are wide open. If porn actors, directors and producers wanted us not to talk about their work, they'd not post it on the net, nor would they try to induce people to spend money on it.

Well actually having sex in view of the public is an arrestable offense country-wide. So that analogy is really poor. Secondly, until the internet blew up, one had to either subscribe to cable or take a trip to your local red-light district. The internet gives pretty easy access, which is definitely something that needs to be looked at and dealt with. That said, you still need to voluntarily go there. No one is enticed to view that stuff unless you cannot resist spam e-mail adverts. Take some responsibility. Bang Bros is not going to randomly show up on your TV or your computer.

In any case no one is saying we can't talk about it. Heck the whole twitter conversation on that kinda makes that whole commentary sound, well, stupid. I shall repeat for those who may be confused. I object to passing judgement on people and making assumptions on persons who perform or consume the material. Not a few "starletts" have twitter accounts. Why not pose the questions directly to them?

Anyway, Back to the trove of "stuff I didn't say":

You see, when folks say they can't tell the difference between a fantasy, even a misogynistic white centric fantasy, and reality, that scares me.

I shall repost the twitter post:

Mr Tunji
12 hours ago
@drgoddess back to intimacy: A) Porn (with the exception of the homemade variety) is staged. The clueless don't get that.

Next:

Real sex doesn't come in neat boxes of anal asians,

I assure Shannon that somewhere in these United States there is an asian woman having anal sex. Maybe even in her state of residence.

black man on white girl

What's that sound? Oh I recognize that sound? It's the sounds of not a few black men with white wives and girlfriends having a hearty laugh as they retire to the bedroom.

or 'mature'

That would be the older sistas in the clubs laughing now.

Real sex isn't a performance

Given the advertisement for Viagra and that ever smiling Enzyte man I would have to agree that there are a lot of men not "performing".

And now for the big denial:

And his experience of feminists claming that looking at a woman is sexual harrassment is as phoney balony as the white folks who swear up and down, up and down, that black people stole their spot in college, or MRAs who swear up and down that women are poking holes in condoms and using turkey basters in their exhaustive drive to have screaming babies wake them up every single day for months on end. I just don't believe it.

Remeber dear reader that I said that there are feminists who feel seh that black men's experiences and positions are to be denied, ignored and ridiculed. I give you exhibit A. So in addition to calling me a "dick" and "dumbass" Shannon is calling me a liar. Never mind she has absolutely no proof that I am lying. I'm a man. I'm straight. I'm black therefore I'm a dumbass, lying dick. What more do you need?

Oh here's the justification:

I think it's because I hear so much minimization of male violence or at least male jerkassery.

I don't believe the "dumbass, lying dick" because all I pay attention to are "dumbass, lying dicks" I suggest Shannon upgrade the quality of men she interacts with.

Returning to the trove of "stuff I didn't say":

I bet once we get to the end of that story of 'just looking', we'll have guys leering on the street, folks looking at folks undressing, and video tapes of people's panties all in 'just looking'. I mean, if actual rape can be called 'having sex' by news outlets, what can we expect from dude?

ahh here we go. men leering. Personally I think men who stare at women walking along the street in an obvious manner lack class. In fact I stated that. Secondly I also stated that I object to men who do Upskirt and toilet/bathroom cameras. However; I will re-iterate for the ill-informed. Public photography of people in public is legal. Period. And it should be. And yes, as classless as it is, it includes the notorious "booty cams" that make appearances after freak week and other black street festivals.

And now Shannon doesn't like science:

If a black person with a penis identifies as a woman, I go with it.

I don't. Deal with it.

Back with the "stuff I didn't say":

The idea that if only fathers would come back and head the family, all would be fine does trivialize women's work, and makes it invisible.

I do wonder if Shannon is in fact dyslexic cause I wrote:

I said in regards to that idea that the presupposition that strong black men (whatever those are) as head of household being an absolute negative has not been proven. For the not too bright that means I'm open to the discussions of the pros and cons of Black men as head of household. Lets supply evidence for and against. Secondly though I'm sure that many in the African-American community have idealized fantasies about a great deal of things, I never made such a claim. I repeat that my claim is that Strong black men (whatever they are) as head of household has not been proven to be definitively negative.

Read it dear reader. Did I make the statement she claimed I made?

I don't think being a man or being a woman is essential to the family.

It is a truly sad state of affairs when such a thing can be said in seriousness. Massa done taught this one well.

Lastly *yawn* we have this:

Also, yes, I did call out the general male privilege of "I deserve this sort of woman". Because it annoys me. Men seem to believe they deserve the proverbial ten, when they are batting more at a one, or maybe a two. I'm not attacking all black men, just the sort of black man who says I'm not dating black women for X reason, and you look at him, and say "and you're so great, why?"

Let me assume then that Shannon cannot run a mile in under 7 minutes. Anyway. Shannon has a problem with men who have high expectations of the women they want to deal with. I say bully for them. I think black women ought to have high standards for what they want as well. Of course people who have outrageous requirements ought to be checked but seriously what does that have to do with porn? I'll ask the reader to watch my first episode of Garvey's Ghost TV where I discuss the bell curve. Perhaps ol' girl lookin' for mr. 6'5 was watching too much porn.