On the Obama "Expression of Regret"

Obama did the right thing when he "expressed regret" to the officer today. Yes that's right. Before the exploding heads go off foaming at the mouth I'd like to point out a few things:

Anyone who has followed this blog, and I've been at it since December of 2003, knows that I am a HUGE supporter of Cynthia McKinney. Now you're wondering what this has to do with anything. Hold your horses there. As we all know, or should know, is about her incident with the DC police. Although I love the sister dearly, I wrote then:

Unfortunately, when she hit the officer, she found herself on the wrong side of the law. She knew it and I'm sure her lawyer reminded her of the fact...

Here's the problem: regardless to whether 3 or 4 happened, an police officer has the right to physically stop any person from entering a secured zone. It doesn't matter if they recognize the person or not. Of course it is courtesy that congresspersons are allowed to go by, but that courtesy does not negate police power (right or wrong). Citizens, do not have the option of ignoring a police request to stop, be it at the capitol building or on a highway.

I had to side with the police officer because regardless of the trouble they had given her:

1) It is there job to ID everyone entering the capitol building
2) It was wrong for her to hit the man.

So it should be clear here that I am capable of both supporting our black leaders (the ones made by us, not those foisted upon us) while at the same time pointing out where they are wrong. Unfortunately such talents are lacking in large quarters of the black community. Now lets get back to Obama.

When Obama was asked the question regarding Gates, he should have seen it for what it was: a set up. He started out correctly by pointing out his own bias towards Gates as well as the fact that he did not have all the facts. At which point he could have said the following:

1) I'm going to withhold commentary but we should know that profiling happens and should be something we should be aware of and combat.

or

2) I believe that both parties were at fault. I believe that the officer did not need to arrest Mr. Gates and that Mr. Gates was wrong to berate the officer who was simply doing his job. Racial profiling is a problem in America but it does not excuse rude behavior by citizens. That's all. Goodnight.

Had Obama done either of the above the headlines would have been either:

1) Obama refuses to comment on Gates situation.

or

2) Obama feels both parties were at fault.

Obama would have been in the clear because the facts of the situation as they are known point to the latter. When Obama took sides with his buddy, he opened himself up for accusations of favoritism and bias. And this is particularly damaging because he admitted he didn't know the facts of the case.

The next thing I'm going to give Obama props for, was for calling the officer and "expressing regret" (apologizing) to him. It is entirely possible, that Obama's statement to the national press was slanderous. Obama by saying that the police acted "stupidly" could be seen as a false statement that Obama knew to be false because he admitted he didn't know what he was talking about. It's unlikely that a suit would have gone anywhere, but still, it was a potential and I'm sure somebody in the White House mentioned it. I say that because this statement made by Obama:

“the Cambridge police acted stupidly in arresting somebody when there was already proof that they were in their own home.”

Is an entirely FALSE description of what happened. It is not supported by the police report. It is not supported by Gates' lawyer's statement. It is not supported by any public statement made by Gates himself of what actually transpired (as opposed to what he FEELS was the case).

So, this is my rare "big up" to Obama for having the balls to go against the current orthodoxy and doing the right thing. Now he can earn a few more props for getting the justice department on the Sean Bell case, to follow up on Wise Intelligent's situation, Paradise Grey's situation and on what happened to Amy Goodman at the RNC.

An addendum to: Did White People Build This Country? A False Assertion Gets Corrected

Davey D has posted an excellent piece entitled: Did White People Build This Country? A False Assertion Gets Corrected:

The challenge we have with today’s news media is that far too often it is driven by ‘expert’ punditry. We see this all the time where people holding lofty titles like ‘Professor’, ‘journalist’ and ‘doctor’ are invited onto shows as pundits and are assumed to be the definitive expert in the topics being discussed. As a result anything they say is taken as fact and hence gets repeated and passed along to others as gospel.

I would add that we ought to include the blogosphere in this equation (which is probably implied in the article). And I'll go further and say that many of the people generally excluded from the "mainstream" punditry, themselves suffer from the idea that they have definitive assertions on subjects and that they themselves will act as if they are beyond correction because "it's their blog" and they'll write what they want. How often do you see a blog owner own up to an incorrect assertion and post a retraction?

How many popular black bloggers do you see who actually write long form, researched pieces with either footnotes or inline references on whatever subject they are discussing? What about direct quotes from primary sources? What about direct quotes from primary sources who are neutral? That is a source that is not trying to prove one side or the other is "right"? I don't see it too often. often what I see are bloggers who repost other peoples blog posts or summarize other people's blog posts, and those blog posts are summaries of a summary of some news agency who probably has the wrong story anyway.

Let me take on one issue with Davey's post:

I am still hearing handpicked Black pundits pushing outdated assertions like; Black people from the hood don’t do well in school because they are afraid of appearing to ‘act white’ . Can we please require this myth which first emerged in the late 80s when during an interview with film maker Spike Lee?

I haven't seen the interview in question, but I do know that the idea was researched by a John Ogbu who discussed it in terms of being voluntary outsiders. His assertions have been challenged I discussed this in two places on my blog (1)(2). I believe that both discussion do in fact show that there is some veracity to the concept of "acting white." and that the only real question in regards to the phenomenon is how widespread is it, particularly among low academic achievers.

Again this is an example of what Davey D is discussing. Why is it "outdated" to discuss something that simply isn't settled? Who determines whether something is "outdated" or "wrong"? If it's anything other than the evidence than I'm suspect of the claim.

About a year ago I was talking with a professor who was lamenting about a white student in her class that claimed that black people could dance better than everyone because of their genes. She couldn't figure out how to handle it. I told her that I have a new way of dealing with people who make such claims. It's not for me to disprove it it's for them to prove it. I told her to wager the student your $1000 to his $10. If he could document the genes that black people have that makes them innately superior dancers, he could have $1000. If he could not then he would lose $10. Clearly if the student had proof of this assertion then he had all the incentive to bring it in and collect the money. Failure to take the "certain" prize was indicative that he was full of manure. No need to get into an argument about the subject because his silence was all the "proof" that was needed.

So that's how I think we should approach blogging and punditry. Be so sure of your postings that you'd put up $1000 bucks to back up what you said. If you can't do that then either clearly indicate that what you wrote is non-verifiable or simply don't write or say it.

Let's step up our games. Lets not only be critical of those that we disagree with, but let us also be critical of our own thoughts and assumptions.

Gates Takes a knock at "Nationalists"

From his audio interview at the Boston Globe:

first of all I'm half white myself. 56% white in my DNA. My father is 75% white. My wife of 25 years is white and my children are half white..." Nobody knows me as some lunatic black nationalist who's walking around beating up on white people

Hmmmm.. I see, So you and your family are not all that black and black nationalists merely beat up on white people. I see. And people are going to bat for this man? I'm done.

KKK & Neo Nazi’s Square Off Against Black Panthers in Paris, Texas

From Davey D:

Madness went down in Paris, Texas today as members of the New Black Panther Party and White Supremacists squared off. The trouble took place when skin heads descended upon a rally held by members of the Black community to protest the jasper style-dragging death of Brandon McClelland last september by two white men.

Gates' Story is fishy

Seriously. Folks. Full of shit. First off, the interview he gave The Root is no more or less prejudicial than the police report. Why? Gates is the editor in chief of that publication. As if he is going to publish something in his own organ that reflects badly on him. But let me get to why the whole thing is suspect:

My driver and I carried several bags up to the porch, and we fiddled with the door and it was jammed. I thought, well, maybe the door’s latched. So I walked back to the kitchen porch, unlocked the door and came into the house. And I unlatched the door, but it was still jammed.



My driver is a large black man. But from afar you and I would not have seen he was black. He has black hair and was dressed in a two-piece black suit, and I was dressed in a navy blue blazer with gray trousers and, you know, my shoes. And I love that the 911 report said that two big black men were trying to break in with backpacks on. Now that is the worst racial profiling I’ve ever heard of in my life. (Laughs.) I’m not exactly a big black man. I thought that was hilarious when I found that out, which was yesterday.



It looked like someone’s footprint was there. So it’s possible that the door had been jimmied, that someone had tried to get in while I was in China. But for whatever reason, the lock was damaged. My driver hit the door with his shoulder and the door popped open. But the lock was permanently disfigured.

So understand the police report from Carlos Figuroa said that the woman who called in the 911 call, Lucia, Whalen, claimed that she saw a large black man trying to push in the door of Gate's house. Now Gates clearly coraborates her story by admitting that the taxi driver was in fact large and was in fact trying to push in the door. Forget who Gates is for a moment: Since the witness does not claim to have seen anything prior to the "big black man wedging the door." Gates cannot infer any malice in her 911 call. Particularly since as he states:

. If I was on Martha’s Vineyard like I am now and someone was trying to break into my house, I would hope that someone called the police and that they would respond. But I would hope that the police wouldn’t arrest the first black man that they saw

So on the one hand Gates would like for the police to respond to 911 break-in's calls so long as the person doing the "breaking in" isn't Gates. How contradictory. Secondly, the officer did not arrest the first black man they saw, they:

1) Arrested the black man giving them grief. A very questionable move.

2) Questioned the man that was in the home that was the location of a reported break in, whom the 911 caller was standing in front of.

So Gates' implication that the Cambridge police randomly decided to go after the "first black man they saw." simply is not supported by the actual events as admitted to by all involved parties.

Gates says:

’ All of a sudden, there was a policeman on my porch. And I thought, ‘This is strange.’ So I went over to the front porch still holding the phone, and I said ‘Officer, can I help you?’ And he said, ‘Would you step outside onto the porch.’ And the way he said it, I knew he wasn’t canvassing for the police benevolent association. All the hairs stood up on the back of my neck, and I realized that I was in danger. And I said to him no, out of instinct. I said, ‘No, I will not.’



My lawyers later told me that that was a good move and had I walked out onto the porch he could have arrested me for breaking and entering.

Hmmm. Generally it's a bad idea to refuse a police officer's instruction. I think the lawyer's after the fact commentary that Gates would have been arrested had he left the premises is faulty. Since it had not been established that Gates had in fact broken into the property the officer could not have arrested him. Furthermore an officer does not need a break in suspect to leave the property in which he is alleged to have broken into in order to arrest him. What an officer needs to establish is probable cause. A 911 call is probable cause to ask for ID, it is NOT probable cause for an arrest on sight. Ogletree ought to know this.

But here's where it gets interesting:

He said ‘I’m here to investigate a 911 call for breaking and entering into this house.’ And I said ‘That’s ridiculous because this happens to be my house. And I’m a Harvard professor.’ He says ‘Can you prove that you’re a Harvard professor?’ I said yes, I turned and closed the front door to the kitchen where I’d left my wallet, and I got out my Harvard ID and my Massachusetts driver’s license which includes my address and I handed them to him. And he’s sitting there looking at them.

Compare this to the police report of the responding officer:

I could see an older black male standing in the foyer of Ware street. I made this observation through the glass paned front door...I asked if he could step out onto the porch and speak with me. He replied "no I will not."

Let me stop here for a minute. Gates has confirmed this part. He refused a request by a police officer to speak with him. I don't know about you but in my experience police don't just show up at my door willy nilly, looking to take me out. I don't know about you, but if an officer comes to my door (it's happened), it's usually because they were called there. Particularly since I don't sell drugs, run a prostitution ring, etc. So really there is no reason for me to be difficult. Why does Gates think he's so special? Secondly and most importantly, the officer is asking you to leave the residence in order that he/she isn't shot at by someone out of view. Continuing:

He then demanded to know who I was. I told him I was Sgt. Crowley from the Cambridge police" and that I was "Investigating a report of a break in progress" at the residence. While I was making this statement Gates opened the front door and exclaimed " why, because I'm a black man in America?" I then asked Gates if there was someone else in the residence. While yelling, he told me that it was none of my business and accused me of being a racist police officer."

Let me stop here again. This is where the story starts to diverge, though the basics seem to be in line. Gates claims that his exclamation that he as a "black man in America" happened after furnishing his ID. The officer's account states that the exclamation happened before the ID was furnished. This is significant because if Gates started his mouth prior to furnishing ID, then he gave the officer more of a reason to think that something was wrong at the scene. But lets look at Gate's explanation of this part:

So he’s looking at my ID, he asked me another question, which I refused to answer. And I said I want your name and your badge number because I want to file a complaint because of the way he had treated me at the front door. He didn’t say, ‘Excuse me, sir, is there a disturbance here, is this your house?’—he demanded that I step out on the porch, and I don’t think he would have done that if I was a white person.

See how the stories diverge here: In Gates' account he admits that he was not paying attention to what the police officer was asking him (the "He asked me another question"). But that also confirms the account of the responding officer who does say that he asked gates another question after asking him to step out on the porch. Now here's where it gets interesting, in Gates' account, the officer has already seen Gate's ID and is then asking Gates "excuse me sir, is there a disturbance here, is this your house?" So at this point we may conclude that someone is not telling the story correctly. Why would the officer ask the question if he already has the ID in hand. In fact the responding officer's report notes:

While I was lead to believe that Gates was lawfully in the residence. I was quite surprised and confused with the behavior he exhibited toward me. I asked Gates to provide me with photo identification so that I could verify that he resided at Ware Street and that I could radio my findings to the ECC. Gates initially refused, demanding that I show him identification but then did supply me with a Harvard University identification card. Upon learning that Gates was affiliated with Harvard, I radioed and requested the presence of the Harvard University Police.



With the Harvard University identification in hand, I radioed my findings to ECC on channel two and prepared to leave.

So the officer was already convinced that Gates was the lawful resident of his home. Gates, apparently was too beside himself to even realize that the situation was just about resolved. Also, anyone who has been stopped for a traffic infraction knows full well that you get your license run through the system to make sure you are who you say you are. Secondly, the officer is required to radio is findings back to the station as he had no expectation of having to do any paperwork.

You'll notice in the officer's report that the ID was furnished towards the end of the initial confrontation rather than how Gates recalls it where he says he will not, then immediately supplies ID and then starts with the accusations. But here's the other interesting thing. Anyone who's had incidents with police know full well you can hear the two way radios very clearly. What was Gates doing where he didn't realize that the Harvard police had not been contacted?

It looked like an ocean of police had gathered on my front porch. There were probably half a dozen police officers at this point. The mistake I made was I stepped onto the front porch and asked one of his colleagues for his name and badge number. And when I did, the same officer said, ‘Thank you for accommodating our request. You are under arrest.’ And he handcuffed me right there. It was outrageous.

So yeah, the ocean of police were in fact the second responding officer and the Harvard PD. Now you'll note in Gates' piece that does not discuss or refute the comment by the responding officer about how he would "speak with his mama." Nor does the supposed interviewer at The Root appear to even ask about it. Even more damning to me is that while Gates makes the claim that the officer claimed that the officer said "Thanks for accommodating my request." There is no discussion that the officer had been walking away from Gates, and had "warned' Gates that he would be arrested for the continued public outburst. In case the reader is unawares, you yell out your window or door at people or play loud music out your window, you're legally creating a public disturbance. And yes, that can get you arrested if you refuse to cease and desist.

So lets understand the facts here: Gates was not arrested because he was mistaken for a burglar, He was arrested for public disturbance and from the report and Gates' own admitted behavior he could have been charged with impeding a police investigation as well.

Secondly, It's pretty disappointing how otherwise intelligent bloggers and academics have reported this incident. Anyone who has been involved with court cases know full well that until someone is under oath and a cross examination has happened, you really don't know the facts. The police have their side, which any reasonable person will suspect and the suspect has a story that should also be viewed with a critical eye. There are a lot of people writing out there who have failed to do any due diligence. HOw does a Princeton professor write a piece on this incident, more than half of which is about Gate's work and accomplishments? It's irrelevant. Seriously. Why should his status have any effect on his treatment? Haven't we been advocating for people to be treated equally and fairly regardless of status? Or is it that it's OK to assail status when the status holder is white but when the status holder is black then...

And what is it with people who think that somehow being cooperative with police is somehow akin to bucking under an overseer's whip? WTF? Some blogger said that Gates' other option was to apologize for being black and in the house. No, no need to apologize to a police officer. Simply take control of the situation by understanding that most police are not corrupt and looking to give you a hard time. They have a job to do and that the calmer you are, the faster it will end. Let me explain how this whole thing could have been resolved:

(Gates at door): Excuse me officer what's the problem? (hand in clear view).

Officer: There was a report of a break in progress.

Gates: Oh I see, probably someone saw me having difficulty with my door. Hold on while I get my ID for you.

Officer: Ok sir. Is there anyone else here?

Gates: Yeah the cab driver who was helping me out. (goes and gets the ID)

Gates: Here you go [hand over ID]. Thanks for looking out for the neighborhood. Anything else I can help you with.

Officer: I need to call this in on the radio.

Gates: No problem. I'm on the phone with Harvard, if you need anything else give me a shout.

Officer: Thanks.

[after the officer leaves]

Gates on phone with Cornell West: Some cracker called the police on me! They still hate that I'm HNIC in here.

Technorati Tags: tag

911 is Joke in Your Town

So news has it that Skip Gates, Dude from Harvard was arrested for disorderly conduct. Sounds bad doesn't it. To read the local twits on the matter you'd think he was unfairly accosted in the manner that Wise Intelligent or Paradise Grey was. But no, that's not apparently the case.

According to the Google report on the matter:

Cambridge police were called to the home Thursday afternoon after a woman reported seeing a man "wedging his shoulder into the front door as to pry the door open," according to a police report.



An officer ordered the man to identify himself, and Gates refused, according to the report. Gates began calling the officer a racist and said repeatedly, "This is what happens to black men in America."



Officers said they tried to calm down the 58-year-old academic, who responded, "You don't know who you're messing with," according to the police report.



Gates was arrested on a disorderly conduct charge after police said he "exhibited loud and tumultuous behavior." He was released later that day on his own recognizance and arraignment was scheduled for Aug. 26.

Let me put this in perspective for a minute. Long ago I had a 1995 Dodge Neon. Unfortunately I was able to lock the car door without removing the keys from the ignition. And so I was locked out. It took me a while to realize that I could actually get into the vehicle without breaking the glass as that model did not have fill door frames and one could pull the glass outwards and slip a clothes hangar into the window and pull on the door handle to open the door. It did bother me that here I was in broad day light committing a class 2 felony and nobody cared. I suppose that if I was a thief, I would have had a nice night.

So going back to Gates, would you actually like to have the police NOT respond to a call from a citizen who believes that your property is being broken into? Strains of PE's 911 is a joke, go through my head. Particularly the part about 911 not showing up. Now I think Mr. Gates suffered here from big head syndrome. As if he was supposed to be recognized on sight by police. But then again, I don't know the area. For all I know there are very few people who live in that area, negroes and all known on sight and the police have been instructed on how to recognize them on sight. Sure.

In my opinion, Gates should have thanked the officers for looking out for his property, explained that his ID was in the house (assuming it was) and that he's gladly show it to them when he got in his house. In the meanwhile, I'm sure that one or more of his neighbors were home and he could have walked over to one of them and had them tell the officer that he did in fact live at that location.

I don't know about you but I like the idea of police (or other emergency service people) showing up promptly when an emergency call is placed.

Now if anything Gates ought to have a potential problem with the woman who called in on him. Did she live in the area? Perhaps she was motivated by seeing an "African-American" breaking into a house. Or maybe Gates was seriously looking like a person doing a home invasion.

One can suppose that the police ought not to have arrested Mr. Gates. But then again that assumes that the police ought not investigate potential felonies when called, ought not try to establish the identity of the home owner. You'll note that there is no mention of abusive language by the officers. I'm sure Gates would have mentioned that. No racial slurs. No Sean Bell type, shoot first investigate after. Seems to be police procedure vs. large ego. Which was clearly not the case with Wise Intelligence or Paradise Grey.

[update]

According to the NY Times

He forced the door open with the help of his cab driver, Professor Ogletree said, and had been inside for a few minutes when Sgt. James Crowley of the Cambridge Police Department appeared at his door and asked him to step outside...

According to his lawyer, Prof. Gates told the sergeant that he lived there and showed his Massachusetts driver’s license and his Harvard identification card but Sergeant Crowley still did not seem to believe that Professor Gates lived in the home, a few blocks from Harvard Square. At that point, his lawyer, Professor Gates grew frustrated and asked for the officer’s name and badge number.

Ogletree is giving hearsay so his story isn't admissible. But it doesn't square with the original story on Google, where there is a refusal to ID first and no mention of ID being produced. Oddly, Gates, having returned from China, ought to have had his passport with him, Odd that he isn't reported to have offered that as ID as well (Not that he should have had to). Is it unreasonable for an officer who gets a report of 3 men looking like they are breaking in to a house to ask the person who is in the house to step outside?

[update2] Charges dropped against Gates. Expected: Story still in flux:

Police said the 58-year-old Gates was arrested after he yelled at an officer, accused him of racial bias and refused to calm down after the officer demanded Gates show him identification to prove he lived in the home.

I suppose we'll never know whether the accusation of bias happened before or after the demand for ID and production of ID which is the pivot point here.

And Who's Fault Is That?

From the Detroit News:

"We're black and he got our vote quite frankly because many of us voted for him because he is black," said Karsem McCurtis on Tuesday, whose family owns Conner's Food, just a stone's throw from the Wayne County Community College campus on Detroit's east side. As it happened, Obama chose Macomb Community College in Warren to unveil a national education initiative.

"It would have been good for him to come," said McCurtis, whose building is painted with an Obama mural. "But he's got our vote locked up, and he's not going to get much play coming to a black city full of corrupt politicians."

So you voted for the man because he was black rather than because he wooed your vote with policy promises and the like, and now you feel bad? Who's fault is that?

Speak The Truth, Shame The Left:

It makes for good speechifying to act as though all criminality began with Bush and -- particularly these days -- Cheney, but that is extreme intellectual dishonesty. The fact is that many of Bush's worst policies (now being highlighted by leading Democrats) were based in some form or another in a Clinton-initiated policy, or were supported by the Democrats in Congress with their votes.

Via Alternet

Obama Has Sympathy For Shot Police Officers

Stated on TV in the aftermath of today's Jersey City shooting. No such commentary for slain civilians at the hands of police though. I suppose I'm the only person who cares about such things though.

RE:Light, Bright and Still Black (Unconventional Wisdom)

On occasion people write about being a "light skinned" black person or about not being an "African-American". They usually all make the same mistake of confusing the sociological and region specific definition of "race" with it's genetic counterpart which is better referred to as "breed." The most annoying part is when people who are otherwise extremely observant and intelligent, lose their cool when confronted with the clear contradictions used in their discussion of the subject matter. The latest of this would be the Black Snob.

Black Snob posted a piece entitled: Light, Bright and Still Black (Unconventional Wisdom) . It starts badly:

I didn't know I was "light-skinned."

Or should I say, I'm not light-skinned but people have informed me one way or another of what I am based on what they are. I am, in fact, not lighter than a paper bag. I am not cafe au latte. I'm a rich, reddish brown that's lighter than most black people, but too dark to be truly considered among the what traditionally was viewed as light-skinned -- which for me is damn near white.

Now the first and major contradiction of the post is that if you've seen her Twitter icon, she is in fact light skinned. How she looks herself dead in the face and comes away with such a clear contradictory conclusion is not for me to explain. BUt her explanation does clue the reader in to how this tortured thinking manages to surface.

The Snob doesn't give us an age range for the "I didn't know" declaration but given the relatively brief experience I've had with child raising in which the child was quite a bit lighter than both of us (his father is light, his mother is not), at 4 he was very much aware that he was light skinned, and made a point of stating that he wished he was darker. I point this out to really put a lie to the oft repeated notion that kids don't notice skin color (among other things). They may not make commentary on it, but they do notice these things. And yes, people (and kids) will gladly point out your differences to you if the situation calls for it (teasing etc.) irrespective of color since for every "yella" joke, there are multiple "You-so-black" jokes, the contradiction of which ought to be a study in and of itself. For the life of me I cannot understand the logic of dissing a black person by saying their momma is so black as if a black person's momma was not supposed to be black. But that's not the point here. What The Snob sets out in this paragraph is to define "black" as some amorphous thing all of which is relative to "white". Note her references to paper bags, the milky coffee, the "too dark to be" references. They all define "blackness" as a thing relative to whiteness. Ergo she is black because she fails to fall into the category of whiteness.

By doing this she simply re-affirms the concept of a white pureness, untainted by blackness, and of a blackness that is a mix of everything. Something that could easily be written by a Grand Wizard of the Klan. Not that she's Klanish, but the sentiment is almost as old as the country itself: blackness as a "mongrellzed" and "bastardized" and "unrefined" group wholly apart from pure whiteness (of Teutonic, Aryan or Saxon descent). As if to re-enforce her commitment to this white supremacist definition of whiteness The Snob continues:

All of this though is irrelevant as no matter what you look like, in America, if you're black you are black. This isn't Brazil or some other South American country where there are a billion color based delineations to separate the blue black Wesley Snipes-ish brothers and sisters from the Wentworth Miller-Grady Sizemore's of the world. This is America, where Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an unapologetically black man, is a dead ringer for white man and former Republican Bob Barr. Did Wright get any sort of pass for his negrotude because he was two steps from passing? Or for that matter, does any black person?

Lets take the initial sentence:

All of this though is irrelevant as no matter what you look like, in America, if you're black you are black.

Well in America as oppose to Brazil, which she contrasts, there is the idiotic and thoroughly white supremacist idea of the "One Drop Rule". The entire purpose of the One Drop Rule is to re-enforce the concept of white purity and prior to the passage of the 14th Amendment, to ensure that white peoples bred property (that being the babies the 'masters" created) were still property, capable of being bought and sold. The One Drop Rule was not created by black folk for their own benefit. It wasn't created to create some manner of black unity. No it was simply a means of legally enforcing a racial caste system. A system that exist until this very day and remains unchallenged by the very people it has been created to marginalize. Let's look at the Brazilian system:

The Brazilian system was motivated by the ideas as the American one. However because of the vast numbers of Native Americans in that area of the world and the relatively small numbers of whites, that area of the world had to develop a system that included natives and the varied "breeds" you'd come across. Also, Portugal and spain has a history with black folk prior to the slave trade that reflected in varied "kinds" of white people there that are clearly mixed. So it is unsurprising that they would institute a system that placed higher value on those who were higher up the "white scale" and that recognized varying levels of mixture. The motive was still the same: white on top and black on the bottom. except in this case there is a significant incentive to "move up." by "breeding up" as it is put, because it had (and has) a direct relationship to one and one's children's ability to move up in society.

Mind you, in America the same thing operates, but on an largely unspoken level, an idea that occasionally breaks cover in Hip Hop interviews and songs disrespecting black women and such "sly" references to the innate beauty of light skinned babies. The relatively high premium placed on light skinned African-American women is undeniable. The common wish of African-American women to have girl children with "good hair" (you know, for combing) is well known. So is the common hope that the babies aren't too dark (whatever that means). But I digress and besides The Snob does cover some of this ground in her piece.

This is America, where Rev. Jeremiah Wright, an unapologetically black man, is a dead ringer for white man and former Republican Bob Barr.

Well Rev. Wright, isn't black. No offense intended and he knows it and has commented upon it which has been aired a number of times. But what is more important is that it is entirely possible that Bob Barr isn't exactly all that "white" either since we do know that every now and then those able to pass, did so, in which case their children would be labelled "white" upon birth. And there are a lot of white families with cases like that. Many simply do not know it.

it's just an assumption that light made right for you, even if in the eyes of most racists you were no different from your darker brethren.

Well actually recent research underscores that which we've known for a long time: Light skinned "African-Americans" are assumed to be more intelligent than dark skinned African-Americans. That includes racist, who have always enjoyed pointing out that the brightest "negroes" were mixed, as well as other black people. I won't even get into the fact that aside from sports, most of the earliest black "firsts" were those who were not so black. Think that an accident and I know a couple of bridges across the East River I'd like to interest you in. Even Good Morning America's latest Doll Experiment showed how early the ideas of negative references to blackness develop in children.

But in any case let me get at the heart of the problem with The Snob's piece: After spending so much time delineating the issue of colorism in African-American communities she still doesn't get it:

I've had arguments with people who did not believe I could be "fully black" with hair as long as mine.

Well see I'm not going to get into singular phenotypes, but the long relatively straight hair is, generally a dead giveaway that one is mixed. You'll note I said "relatively straight" not "relatively curly." had I used the latter term then I would have made straight hair "normative". Other dead giveaways are hazel eyes, green eyes and light skin and generally...generally, narrow noses. It's not hard to tell. Look, the fact is that the vast majority of African-Americans originate from West Africa, from the Ngola region (current Angola) up through Senegal. We know what these people look like. Those are the originals. You wanna know how far off the mark you are, just do a quick comparison (and pay no attention to body shape or height). The fact of the matter is that while all black people are African-American (generally speaking), not all African-Americans are black. African-Americans are in a sense an ethnic group in America which I think directly contradicts the claim made be The Snob. It has a shared history and a general shared sub-culture in America. That is the reason why a Rev. Wright, Adam Clayton Powell, and Thurgood Marshall can be considered "black" as in African-American just the same as Clarence Thomas, even though many of us would prefer to relieve ourselves of him.

Unlike the claim made by The Snob, that "lightness" is some random scale, it isn't. There are clear genetic codings that are responsible for it that are directly tied to ones parentage and lineage. What is random and mutable are the attitudes that The Snob discusses. These attitudes are also my reasoning for being more and more clear about who and what is "black" and "white". Had those things been clear, such thing The Snob experienced would never have happened. Why compare skin color with a white classmate if you both understand and acknowledge that you both share common and recent ancestors? But The Snob doesn't quite get it. If she had instead of writing:

Trapped by my own fate of being born black and loathed by some for it. There is no better. There's only different.

she would have written: Trapped of my own fate of being born mixed and loathed by some for it. There is no better. there's only different.

That 4 year old who wished he was dark? I never fell into telling him he was black. That would have been telling him to lie to himself. Rather I let him know that there was nothing wrong with him. He's different and that it was OK. We loved him just as much. Hopefully he'll not be writing a piece like The Snob. Or if he does it won't get defensive about what people rightfully observe but instead simply state what it is, is what it is. He wont add to the confusion, rather he'll just tell it like it is. And we'd all be better off.

Skirt Wearing Boys

You know I saw this sight yesterday that really bothered me. By now I've become somewhat and unfortunately accustomed to seeing young (and some not so young) black men walking around with their pants in various states of falling. Adding insult to injury is the fact that a lot of these "men" are wearing belts. Belts. The purpose of belts is to keep one's pants at one's hips. So it's bad enough that the pants are in many cases completely off the wearers ass but in addition, they are wearing a belt.

But that's not really what bothered me. No, this time this boy walked past me as I was waiting to get onto a street. There was something odd about his gait. I couldn't place it at first. But as he passed my windshield it hit me. His pants (with belt of course) would not stay up and so he was holding the fronts of the legs up. You know what that looks like? This:

Notice how the woman is holding up the front of her dress. This is exactly how this "man" was walking. I suppose at some point in the future they'll be walking around like this:

This needs to stop.

Ye Old "No Blacks in The Pool" Show

And so I see a twit regarding black children booted from a private pool at The Valley Swim Club.

Now I understand that the club is a private club and therefore is legally free to accept whomever they want on whatever grounds they want. So I'm not going to be calling for lawsuits etc. In fact I'm not as bothered by the policy as I am by the following:

"When the minority children got in the pool all of the Caucasian children immediately exited the pool," Horace Gibson, parent of a day camp child, wrote in an email. "The pool attendants came and told the black children that they did not allow minorities in the club and needed the children to leave immediately."

Now assuming that the above is true one has to ask what part of swim class includes the "negro in the pool" evacuation technique? Does this club actually spend time teaching these kids of the dangers of Negroes in pools and how to make an effective escape lest the Negro dirt (you know that special Negro dirt that many a public pool had to be drained of back in the not so long day) get on them?

I wonder if the kids were also taught to immediately make for the showers for decontamination.

As a swimmer, I really want to know, because I can tell you that when people get into the pool one does not naturally have an urge to exit the pool. Heck even if people are doing belly flops and having splash fights, I've never felt the urge to evacuate the pool.

And, what pray tell do these children do at public beaches, were all manner of Negroes can be found? I suppose they try to go to beaches in places like Cape May, NJ where the Negro count is low.

Honduras

Funny how people changed their twitter icons to green for alleged election fraud in Iran, but apparently have ad little if anything to say about Honduras. There's even a Boxee app "where is their vote" up, but yet to be seen is the "Where is their president" app. I won't hold my breath. A nice piece in Counterpunch in regards to our neighbor to the south:

The faithful media sows the seeds: in both Venezuela 2002 and Honduras 2009, the national and international media prepared the ground for an eventual coup by distorting the truth and calling into question the democratic credentials of the president. In Honduras, this has taken the form of misrepresenting Zelaya’s constitutional proposal as a re-election bid, a line which was and continues to be shamelessly pushed in the media, when the referendum question had nothing to do with re-election at all, but was instead a completely legal mandate to transforming the existing constitution (itself a holdover from the far-right governments of the 1980s). Some nominally of the left repeated this tasty morsel of misinformation, while Fox News’ Shep Smith argued today that not only had Zelaya sought to extend his term, but to do so would have been “treasonous” (an interesting perspective on constitutional amendments, to say the least).

Some Other Points on Iran

From Counterpunch:

What is striking is that most of the postings were in English, not Persian, begging the question: who was the target audience of these tweets? Similarly, why were the protesters holding signs saying, “Where is my vote?” in English, rather than the language spoken by the voters of Iran?

I asked the same question in a comment at the NY Times website.

But a study by the website, www.chartingstocks.net, concluded that during three days after the election, the overwhelming majority of Tweets (over 30,000), were manipulated through a handful of accounts; all created within one day of the elections on June 13. It is interesting to note that only 0.6 percent of Twitter accounts are used by Iranians (as compared to 44 percent by Americans).

Interesting indeed.

Pirates of the Mediterranean

Paul Craig Roberts hits one out the park again:

On June 30, the government of Israel committed an act of piracy when the Israeli Navy in international waters illegally boarded the “Spirit of Humanity,” kidnapped its 21-person crew from 11 countries, including former US Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney and Nobel Laureate Mairead MaGuire, and confiscated the cargo of medical supplies, olive trees, reconstruction materials, and children’s toys that were on the way to the Mediterranean coast of Gaza. The “Spirit of Humanity,” along with the kidnapped 21 persons, is being towed to Israel as I write.

the question that immediately comes to mind is why did not the United States send sufficient US Navy escort to see the “Spirit of Humanity” safely through international waters to Gaza? We send ships against Somalian pirates, why not against Israeli ones?

Why The New Haven Decision is Good for Black Folk

I don't know about you, "you" being other black readers, but I cannot stand when people assume that because I'm black that I:

Grew up poor: I did but that's not really relevant.
Play Basketball: I don't.
Can Dance...Like MJ: I Don't. I "rent a tile" as a friend of mine put it.
Have a big extremity: Well, I don't want to brag...
Don't know what I'm doing: I'm a genius don't you know?


That last point is something I've had to deal with a number of times. I have had many instances where people simply assumed they knew more than I did on a particular thing with no other apparent reason being that I was black. I kid you not. Whether it's having my employment credentials questioned or a particular point of fact on a subject. To the look of surprise I get when I'm met, cause the "voice" didn't match the face. And this goes beyond the ever present: He's here because we needed a black face, attitude that many a black person can attest to. It's as if there is a biological blind spot that certain people have when there are clearly incompetent white people employed and who think they are The Shit (tm).

Anyway, the point being that as Dr. Bill Cosby pointed out a few years ago, people like to drape a number of negative associations with black people and then pander to them based on these associations. One of the most pernicious and insulting one is that black people can't do well on tests, particularly written exams. And I say "can't" because "cannot" denotes dome kind of innate ability rather than something that is acquired or the result of some mutable external influence, This is truly at the heart of the New Haven case. If you look at all the information presented there, you will note a couple of things:

1) The City of New Haven went to great lengths to make a "fair" test. From the decision:

After reviewing bids from various consultants, the City
hired Industrial/Organizational Solutions, Inc. (IOS) to
develop and administer the examinations, at a cost to the
City of $100,000. IOS is an Illinois company that special-
izes in designing entry-level and promotional examina-
tions for fire and police departments. In order to fit the
examinations to the New Haven Department, IOS began
the test-design process by performing job analyses to
identify the tasks, knowledge, skills, and abilities that are
essential for the lieutenant and captain positions. IOS
representatives interviewed incumbent captains and
lieutenants and their supervisors. They rode with and
observed other on-duty officers. Using information from
those interviews and ride-alongs, IOS wrote job-analysis
questionnaires and administered them to most of the
incumbent battalion chiefs, captains, and lieutenants in
the Department. At every stage of the job analyses, IOS,
by deliberate choice, oversampled minority firefighters to
ensure that the results—which IOS would use to develop
the examinations—would not unintentionally favor white
candidates.
With the job-analysis information in hand, IOS devel-
oped the written examinations to measure the candidates’
job-related knowledge. For each test, IOS compiled a list
of training manuals, Department procedures, and other
materials to use as sources for the test questions. IOS
presented the proposed sources to the New Haven fire
chief and assistant fire chief for their approval. Then,
using the approved sources, IOS drafted a multiple-choice
test for each position. Each test had 100 questions, as
required by CSB rules, and was written below a 10th-
grade reading level. After IOS prepared the tests, the City
opened a 3-month study period. It gave candidates a list
that identified the source material for the questions, in-
cluding the specific chapters from which the questions
were taken.
IOS developed the oral examinations as well. These
concentrated on job skills and abilities. Using the job-
analysis information, IOS wrote hypothetical situations to
test incident-command skills, firefighting tactics, interper-
sonal skills, leadership, and management ability, among
other things. Candidates would be presented with these
hypotheticals and asked to respond before a panel of three
assessors.
IOS assembled a pool of 30 assessors who were superior
in rank to the positions being tested. At the City’s insis-
tence (because of controversy surrounding previous ex-
aminations), all the assessors came from outside Connecti-
cut. IOS submitted the assessors’ resumes to City officials
for approval. They were battalion chiefs, assistant chiefs,
and chiefs from departments of similar sizes to New Ha-
ven’s throughout the country. Sixty-six percent of the
panelists were minorities, and each of the nine three-
member assessment panels contained two minority mem-
bers. IOS trained the panelists for several hours on the
day before it administered the examinations, teaching
them how to score the candidates’ responses consistently
using checklists of desired criteria.

So let's summarize here:

a) To qualify for either captain or lieutenant one had to have a High School diploma but the test was written to a 10th grade reading level. In other words, sitting in that exam, the words used were at least three levels of education lower than the minimum requirement to be promoted. Yet there are people who, with a straight face, want to claim that there is something inherently unfair with expecting black folk to do well on such an exam. Instead grown black men ought to be given a chance to "demonstrate" their abilities by acting out scenarios. Clearly they are not expected to be able to imagine scenarios and imagine and translate that imagining into intelligible speech or writing like other people the world over. The old form of that argument was when teachers told Jr. that it was cute that he wanted to be an engineer but he should learn to "work with his hands."

b) The City of New Haven gave all the candidates a list of the source material for the questions including the specific chapters from which the questions would be taken. One witness testified that the books were either too expensive (~$500) and/or that the books were on back order and not available until about a month before the test. Furthermore that white firefighters were able to obtain books from family members who already had the source material. Now I would agree that this would be a particularly troublesome situation. However, the City, to my knowledge did not make such a claim when it tossed the test. Had the city said that the preparatory material was not available to all candidates and therefore those without the material were at a clear disadvantage to those who did have access to the material and had tossed the exam out on those grounds, I believe that they may have prevailed. So the question would be, how many of the black firefighters had access to the material? Did the Latino that made a high enough grade to be considered for immediate promotion have access to this material? These are valid questions which apparently were not addressed. And in the court, the argument not made is the argument not considered.

c) The panelists for the oral portions were specifically set up so that "minorities" were the majority of the panelists. Though it is now documented by the Academy of Management Journal, that "minorities" also have a tendency to rate white males higher on various scales of competence even when there is no difference in behavior, the odds are wildly against the results that occurred here. Furthermore; the city had gone out of its way to avoid problems from earlier exams by having panelists from outside the state who were of higher rank than those the tests were a screen for.

So we have to note that overall the city of New Haven made an extraordinary attempt to make an exam that fell within the collective agreement with the firefighters union and that went to address issues from the previous exam. Therefore on it's face the city had covered it's bases in terms of Title VII.


2) The results:

Candidates took the examinations in November and
December 2003. Seventy-seven candidates completed the
lieutenant examination—43 whites, 19 blacks, and 15
Hispanics. Of those, 34 candidates passed—25 whites, 6
blacks, and 3 Hispanics. 554 F. Supp. 2d, at 145. Eight
lieutenant positions were vacant at the time of the exami-
nation. As the rule of three operated, this meant that the
top 10 candidates were eligible for an immediate promo-
tion to lieutenant. All 10 were white. Ibid. Subsequent
vacancies would have allowed at least 3 black candidates
to be considered for promotion to lieutenant.
Forty-one candidates completed the captain examina-
tion—25 whites, 8 blacks, and 8 Hispanics. Of those, 22
candidates passed—16 whites, 3 blacks, and 3 Hispanics.
Ibid. Seven captain positions were vacant at the time of
the examination. Under the rule of three, 9 candidates
were eligible for an immediate promotion to captain—7
whites and 2 Hispanics. Ibid.

[emphasis mine]

You'll note in Ginsberg's dissent, she felt that the petitioners did not have a "right" to promotions. The highlighted text shows that 3 blacks who had passed the exam would have been considered for promotions for lieutenant the next time the position opened up. This is, in my view, significant. It is clear that there was a desired outcome (at least one black person in the "immediate promotion" group) and therefore an assumption that some black person has a "right" to promotion. After all, at least three blacks would have been promoted between the time of the exam and the SCOTUS decision yesterday (that assumes three lieutenant positions opened up). It is clear that had at least one black candidate existed then the court case would not exist. In other words, Ginsberg et al. is saying that blacks have the right to promotion above and beyond any other group. Now I'm flattered that Ginsberg thinks so highly of me, and I'd love to work for whatever company she happens to run. And I'm sure that along the lines of power advocates, that is a nice position to have, but legally, that position simply cannot fly. It's one thing entirely for an organization to have an affirmative action policy that seeks out qualified black candidates for a jobs and wants to make a diverse or "reflective" organization. Heck, The organization can want to make up for past discrimination, but to:

1) Change a test to make it easier for blacks to pass because well, you know, they can't do certain types of tests.
2) Give, toss, and re-give exams in order to get some kind of result (as Ginsberg suggested).

Is simply outrageous. I have no doubt that there are (and going to be) numerous opinion pieces with those with far more connects than I (and I haven't read them in order to not pollute this piece), which will say that the sky is falling for black people seeking employment. I disagree. The lesson here is pretty clear, Black organizations must continue to press for clear, disclosed and equal employment opportunities. Prospective black employees must make sure to meet those qualifications. Blacks seeking promotional opportunities, ought to do their due diligence. In this particular case, that means that those blacks who wanted to test to become Lieutenant ought to have started prepping for the exam long before the test dates were announced. That also means that black firefighter organizations ought to be at the forefront of mentoring their membership and securing study materials. These organizations and individuals could have easily pooled resources to purchase books and then photocopy them (though there are clear copyright concerns with this, it is done often in schools). They could have formed study groups.

For me, this comes down to expectations. Here's a retired Michigan captain:

Vincent Lewis, a fire program
specialist for the Department of Homeland Security and a
retired fire captain from Michigan. Lewis, who is black,
had looked “extensively” at the lieutenant exam and “a
little less extensively” at the captain exam. He stated that
the candidates “should know that material.” Id., at
A1048, A1052. In Lewis’s view, the “questions were rele-
vant for both exams,” and the New Haven candidates had
an advantage because the study materials identified the
particular book chapters from which the questions were
taken. In other departments, by contrast, “you had to
know basically the . . . entire book.”

I have to say, as someone who works at an institution of higher learning; I see students who simply do not put in the effort required. I know of teachers who simply do not study and expect to pass a test or depend upon a curved grade to pass. Students who have exams that have questions taken directly from study material and still give the wrong answer and due to the fact that the teacher often gives the "complementary" question (that is a question that is the same material but has the opposite answer such that if one knows the material one has basically been given a free point), which the student(s) also miss simply because they did not study or study properly. Ultimately, in my experience, the ones who pass the tests and score the highest are a combination of those who know the most and those who want it the most. Sometimes the ones who want it the most are not the brightest, but they compensate with effort (such as that dyslexic individual).

In the end then the message sent is clear: You have the right to equal opportunity not equal outcome. Opportunity is the employer's job, the outcome is yours. This is good for black folk because it underscores the old school mentality that we must put 100% into our efforts to our own success rather than expect people to dumb down, or make special preparations for us as if we are incapable of doing what others have done. The former leads to higher levels of respect, the latter leads only to disrespect.

RIP Michael Jackson

If you're my age, you were in Junior High[ eh correction..grade school] School when Thriller dropped. I saw the video at school. If you lived in NYC, you remember seeing Jackson videos on Video Music Box. You know that MJ was a daily staple of MTV.

I remember being in Jamaica W.I. for a summer and the corner bar would rock Billie Jean out the jukebox. You could hear it down the street. Even in the land of Reggae MJ was tops.

You remember Bad dropping when you were in High School.

Can't never be to pro-black to love a MJ track. Not even going to discuss the other stuff.

Apparently MJ went out training for his upcoming tour. Gotta love that. Don't stop 'till you get enough. Lived that.

Live that.

Obama makes Clearly False Statement on Iran.

As reported in the NY Times, Obama made a provably false statement in regards to the current Iranian situation:

He also said that comments by Iranian officials blaming the United States, Britain and other Western nations for inciting the protests were “patently false” and a “tired strategy to use old tensions to scapegoat other countries” that will not work.

From the transcript:

The Iranian people are trying to have a debate about their future. Some in Iran -- some in the Iranian government, in particular, are trying to avoid that debate by accusing the United States and others in the West of instigating protests over the elections.

These accusations are patently false. They're an obvious attempt to distract people from what is truly taking place within Iran's borders.

This is clearly contradicted be printed and readily available sources such as those linked to on this blog in the last two days.

So why didn't the NY Times, a supposed record of repute not note that Obama made a clearly false statement?

Where are the so called "liberal" bloggers who had much to say when GW Bush was doing the lying?

Where are the black people who had much to say when Bush was doing the lying? Where are they?

Where are the twits? Huh? Where are the Move On e-mails?

Where are the poets who had much to say about Bush lying?

Where are these hypocrites? They are, in the words of the Great One in DC "distract[ed] people from what is truly taking place within Iran's borders."

Excellent Writeup on Iran

Nice piece at Counterpunch

On the other hand, there was only one poll carried out by a western news organization. It was jointly commissioned by the BBC and ABC News, and conducted by an independent entity called the Center for Public Opinion (CPO) of the New America Foundation. The CPO has a reputation of conducting accurate opinion polls, not only in Iran, but across the Muslim world since 2005. The poll, conducted a few weeks before the elections, predicted an 89 percent turnout rate. Further, it showed that Ahmadinejad had a nationwide advantage of two to one over Mousavi...

According to official results, there were 46.2 million registered voters in Iran. The turnout was massive, as predicted by the CPO. Almost 39.2 million Iranians participated in the elections for a turn out rate of 85 percent, in which about 38.8 million ballots were deemed valid (about 400,000 ballots were left blank). Officially, President Ahmadinejad received 24.5 million votes to Mousavi’s 13.2 million votes, or 62.6 per cent to 33.8 per cent of the total votes, respectively. In fact, this result mirrored the 2005 elections when Ahmadinejad received 61.7 per cent to former President Hashemi Rafsanjani’s 35.9 per cent in the runoff elections. Two other minor candidates, Mehdi Karroubi and Mohsen Rezaee, received the rest of the votes in this election.

inside Prisons: Some Brutal Reading

Hat tip to Playahata. No Escape tells of what happens to men behind bars. I read every quote and case study and watched the video. This is brutal stuff. I have two things to say about this:

1) These prisons are not only messing up the minds of young black men who get sent there, but I believe is the primary source of HIV infection among straight African-American women, when they get out.

2) That the authorities know these things happen and feel that it's OK, constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. Seriously, I don't have much sympathy for someone who burglarizes or in one case, set fire to a dumpster, but to send someone into a cell with a known rapist? The words I have for this cannot be posted without posting a warning for minors. Personally I cannot imaging going through that, being released and not wanting to commit a few homicides (against those who let it happen) and then taking myself out. Seriously.

3) I'm seriously thinking that these gang members are undercover homosexuals. Some of the stuff I read just doesn't make sense even in the power dynamic discussed. I believe that if they were really straight they would stop with the cell cleaning and beatings. The reading does demonstrate that at it's heart rape, of a male or female, is ultimately about power. I suppose the brutality written about here is a reflection of the relative powerlessness that these individuals feel.

[During one six-month period], I had the orbit of my left eye fractured, and was assaulted by another prisoner with a knife, among other altercations. This was all due to my refusal for sex. My mother has been a prison guard for over 20 yrs in Florida and the other prisoners wanted to "turn me out" to homosexuality to get back at her and the department.
After 6 months of this treatment I requested to be placed in Protective Management (P.M.), and was taken before the special review board where I presented several letters written by other prisoners who were threatening me with violence if I would not "be with them" sexually. The board refused to put me on P.M. . . . I was then placed back in administrative confienment, waiting on an open cell in population. It was then that I realized the violence would not stop. At the end of my mental and emotional endurance, I tried to kill myself with a razor. 40 stitches and 11 days later I was returned to A.M. II where I wouldn't need "protection" because I was locked in a cell 24 hours a day.
6 months later, in 1997, I was returned to population where I promptly requested P.M. once more. I was given the distinct impression that if I tried to pursue the issue I would be put back on A.M. I couldn't stand the thought of being locked away in another cell all my life, so I did the only thing I could do—I found someone to "be with." I determined I'd be better off to willingly have sex with one person, than I would be to face violence and rape by multiple people. The most tragic part to this is that the person I chose to "be with" has AIDS.
. . . . My life is in danger at F.S.P., and I want the public to know this. A place like F.S.P. could not exist, could not do such things without public support. The opposite of compassion is not hatred, it's indifference.
—M.M., Florida, 7/30/99

Paul Craig Roberts on Iran

Another example of why I'm not going along with this 'green revolution" nonsense:

On May 16, 2007, the London Telegraph reported that Bush regime official John Bolton told the Telegraph that a US military attack on Iran would “be a ‘last option’ after economic sanctions and attempts to foment a popular revolution had failed.”


It is possible that splits among the mullahs themselves brought about by their rival ambitions will aid and abet what the Telegraph (May 27, 2007) reported were “CIA plans for a propaganda and disinformation campaign intended to destabilize, and eventually topple, the theocratic rule of the mullahs.” It is certainly a fact that the secularized youth of Tehran have played into the CIA’s hands.

And previously:

On June 29, 2008, Seymour Hersh reported in the New Yorker: “Late last year, Congress agreed to a request from President Bush to fund a major escalation of covert operations against Iran, according to current and former military, intelligence, and congressional sources. These operations, for which the President sought up to four hundred million dollars, were described in a Presidential Finding signed by Bush, and are designed to destabilize the country’s religious leadership.”

I'm just saying..

Watch the hands. Watch the hands!!

Contrasts

From the NY Times:

Mr. Qashqavi drew comparisons with American election results.

“No one encouraged the American people to stage a riot” because they disagreed with the re-election of George W. Bush, he said. Quoted by Press TV, Abbas Ali Kadkhodaei, the spokesman for the authoritative Guardian Council — a 12-member panel of clerics charged with certifying the vote —

And I've been saying that for about a week now. I fully support the Iranian people's right to assemble and press their case but the number of people acting like they could act like that here (US) and not have water hoses, rubber bullets, tear gas, and mass arrests are smoking some serious crack. How many peaceful organizations were infiltrated and monitored prior to the 2004 election? How many people were locked up during the Republican convention in NYC on totally bullshit charges? Reporters denied press credentials? Reporters arrested? Check and check.

All I'm saying is to keep this all in historical and factual perspective.

1 in 4 South African Men admit to Rape?

Seen on The Root!

-The interviewed were a representative sample of 1,738 men in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal.

-28% said they had raped a woman or girl, and 3% said they had raped a man or boy.

Almost 50% who said they had carried out a rape admitted they had done so more than once, with 73% saying they had carried out their first assault before the age of 20.

-One in 10 men said they had been forced to have sex with another man. Many find it difficult to report such attacks to the police in subcultures where the concept of homosexuality is taboo.

Given the population of South Africa, I'm wondering how accurate this is. 1,700 men is not exactly representative. That said, it is indeed troubling to see the age at with these rapists are starting. There was not a discussion of the belief that sex with a virgin (or being urinated on by a virgin) was a cure for AIDS and how this may be driving some of those numbers.

The original article at the Mail and Guardian had this comment:

"We hear men saying, 'If Jacob Zuma can have many wives, I can have many girlfriends.'

To those men: Wives are not girlfriends. If you're going to live the polygamous lifestyle, understand that you have to wife the woman and you have an obligation to provide for all of them AND the children. The women are not disposable. If you cannot do what is required then you're not a man.

European Solar Power from African Deserts?

What?

Munich Re, an insurance company, is leading efforts to garner support for a vast project, dubbed Desertec, to collect energy at solar farms in countries like Tunisia and then send it to Europe in the form of electricity. Munich Re wants other companies like the giant engineering group Siemens, Deutsche Bank, and utilities like RWE and E.ON to become involved.

Under the plan, energy would be gathered mostly using concentrating solar power, a technology that uses mirrors to harness rays from the sun to produce steam and drive turbines that make electricity. The power would then be delivered to Europe through high voltage direct current cables.

These cables are generally more expensive than alternating current cables, but far better at conserving power over long distances.

Excuse me? Ummm no. Greedy Europeans, not content to have used up the petrol reserves, want to now run up in Africa for solar power? Solar power in Africa for Africans FIRST, Europe can have what we don't use and at high prices at that.

What I've learned from MSM Coverage of Iran

1) Iran is a nickname for Tehran.
2) There is absolutely nothing odd about these "colored revolutions."
3) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has no supporters at all.
4) Mahmoud Ahmadinejad supporters, if they exist, don't use twitter. Don't have cell phones and perhaps no computers at all.
5) Police brutality in Iran is worthy of commentary by the president. Negroes shot down in the streets of NY by police do not.
6) Exit polls are only valid in "western" "democracies." when used in Iran they are faulty.
7) There is nothing odd about the police activity being centered at the University.

"Watch the hands. Watch the hands!"

Extent of E-Mail Surveillance Renews Concerns in Congress

No, really?

The N.S.A. is believed to have gone beyond legal boundaries designed to protect Americans in about 8 to 10 separate court orders issued by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, according to three intelligence officials who spoke anonymously because disclosing such information is illegal. Because each court order could single out hundreds or even thousands of phone numbers or e-mail addresses, the number of individual communications that were improperly collected could number in the millions, officials said. (It is not clear what portion of total court orders or communications that would represent.)

“Say you get an order to monitor a block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at a big corporation, and instead of just monitoring those, the N.S.A. also monitors another block of 1,000 e-mail addresses at that corporation,” one senior intelligence official said. “That is the kind of problem they had.”


“Some actions are so flagrant that they can’t be accidental,” Mr. Holt said.

Even Now, There’s Risk in ‘Driving While Black’

Title from a NY Times op ed

Could have easily read:

"There's risk of going after people who broke into YOUR car if your black"

Or

"Let the thief get your shit or you'll be shot by the police."

or

"If you're black, beware the plain-clothed or off-duty NYPD."

Another Bible Lesson

I haven't written on religion in a while, but I was greatly annoyed by what was on my TV Sunday morning. I had left the TV on one of those channels that carries on of the Sunday mega church preachers. I don't know if it was Creflo Dollar or Dollar Bill, or whomever. Usually as soon as I recognize "Preacher" I change the channel. However; that morning I actually decided to see what the man had to say. Apparently his topic was about something "Natural" his main point being that fear is not natural and if something is not natural then it does not come from or is of God. As proof of this he offered up 2 Timothy:

2 Timothy 1:7 (Whole Chapter)
For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind.

Now I'm sure that one can decide to translate this in many ways, one of which could be that living in a state of fear is unnatural and not desired by God. And had Mr Preacher actually made that statement I'd have nothing to write about. But that's not what he said. He said flat out that fear is un-natural. Now if one goes to Bible.com and do a search for "fear" through the KJV, you'll come up with 21 pages of citations of "fear." the favorite of mine is:

Proverbs 1:7 (Whole Chapter)
The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction.

Now then clearly this single verse utterly contradicts Mr. Preacher. His sermon ought to have been cut short by some audience member pointing this clear contradiction out. Kinda reminded me of one of the reasons I stopped with church. It's hard for me to go along with the general message when the message has so many obvious flaws in it.

Fear, like every other emotion is natural. It clearly serves us well when we decide to not cross a street against traffic. However living in a state where one fears everything is not good. Similarly, a person who has never experienced fear is a person who either has never taken a chance in life, or is a serial killer who knows he's not going to ever get caught.

Anyway, I didn't stay tuned in too long for that. I hope perhaps I missed the part where he was making some counterpoint, but I'm not really thinking so.

A Small Note on the Iranian Elections

You know, I'm not surprised by what's going on in Iran right now. Anyone who has a clue as to what the US has been doing in Iran for the past couple of years should have seen this coming. First I do think there was some electoral fraud going on. I say this for the simple reason that if accurate, reports that the challenger lost his hometown is highly suspect. I have a hard time accepting that kind of news from that part of the world. Secondly the victory of the current president is pretty wide for the reported turnout. I realize there is a desire for legitimacy but they could have made that victory closer. And the reason I'm so nonchalant about it is because we know that the Supreme authority in Iran does NOT lie in the president, but rather the Supreme religious leader. So any president is going to be limited by that higher authority anyway.

Now what I find particularly disingenuous about the news coverage of the rioting in Iran is how downright hypocritical. The various news media in the US act as if police here wouldn't do the same things as the Iranian authorities are doing. See unlike many of my younger cohorts here in the US, I've actually been in on the street, no "permission" from the police protests. You know, back when Al Sharpton wore a sweat suit rather than an Armani suit. And I've been hit up by police in riot gear and watched people get tossed into "paddy wagons."

If that's not enough, I would ask the reader to recall the riots at the G8 summit that occurred in Seattle. Plenty of night sticking and tear gas there.

Not enough? Perhaps the reader will recall the Republican national convention in NY in 2004, where massive numbers of people were "detained" on bogus charges.

People, I can come up with a whole lot of examples. Simply put the only news here is that the Iranian people have the balls in a so called "dictatorship" to take to the streets for days, when they feel an election is stolen, and Americans? Those people in the "land of the free"? well they sat back in 2000, shrugged their shoulders and asked what was for dessert.

In anycase, not to long after the invasion of Iraq, Bush had stepped up efforts in Iran to have a regime change happen there by providing support (money) for "opposition" parties. And you'd be a fool to not believe there are not actual persons on the ground in Iran. This would be a direct meddling in the internal politics of Iran which would partially explain what I believe to be vote fraud. So when you're reading and viewing reports on the situation keep these points in mind. There's a lot not being said.

"Frick Over Frack"

Since people don't listen when black folk say it, and I suppose since people get all pissy with me when I keep telling them there's a hairs width difference between Democrats and Republicans, I'll let Thomas Golisano, who engineered the recent NY Senate coup, say it:

Golisano was skeptical that Republicans, who ran the Senate for more than 40 years, would make reforms he wants, including an independent Senate budget office and term limits for leadership posts.

"He told him you had 40 years and didn't make a difference," Pigeon said of Golisano. "He said, give me a reason why it should be Frick over Frack."

Now maybe the billionaire white guy from upstate NY will get your attention. Either way the billionaire gets what he wants.

RE: Commentary: Don't hold Obama to race agenda

In America, well not only America, there is a general observable split in the general political leanings of black folk. I'm not talking about a conservative/liberal split since a large majority of black folk in the US can be categorized as "liberal." No, what I speak of is a split among the liberal side. One side I will call the George Jeffersons and the others the Malcolm X/Kwame Ture faction.

Those familiar with the sitcom "The Jefferson's" know that the theme for that show was "Movin On Up." it is the "strivers" anthem of getting a piece of the pie. The wish to be included in society. To show that we too can "play that game."

The Malcolm X/Kwame Ture faction has an ideology that in general that the pie is spoiled and needs to be tossed and a new pie created. We can all partake in both the disposal of the pie and the enjoyment of it's replacement. Moving up isn't a problem, it's how you move up and what you do when you're up there. It is the morality side of the climb rather than the climb itself.

Having generalized these two wings, let me get to the inspiration for this post. Melissa Harris-Lacewell, penned a piece that appeared in CNN entitled "Don't hold Obama to race agenda". Right from the title I had a problem. I've discussed this particular habit of certain black folk to willingly back burner their own issues as if they don't deserve to be addressed head on or that those issues are somehow not good for the rest of the country. I said:

Another example is the Civil Rights Act itself. Anyone who reads the document will clearly see that it is not directed only at Black people as it includes protections for ethnic groups, gender, etc. Again mostly black folk who took water hoses, dogs, lynchings, etc. got legislation through that now protects a large number of people many of whom lifted nary a finger to gain those protections.

So when I see black folk, particularly "intellectuals" who dismiss "black issues" as parochial all manner of red flags go up with me since it is a clear example of Carter G. Woodson's observation that black folk will find a way to see themselves out.

Now I understand there is clearly an ideological difference between Lacewell and Smiley. And to be clear, I'm not wholly in Smiley's camp, but in my opinion it's not exactly balanced to have a known "blank cheque" Obama supporter writing commentary against Smiley. I'll be looking forward to a rebut. It would be fair. Carrying on though.

Lacewell states:

One might suspect that Smiley would be enthusiastic about the opportunities presented by America's election of a black president.

Well I can't speak for Smiley but I think it's unfair to say that he's not enthusiastic about the opportunities that made an Obama possible as well as what an Obama represents for the future. I think the comment is a serious insult the man's intelligence. That said, there is a difference between enthusiasm, and outright blind following. How many times have I read about the dangers of blindly following this or that "black leader" only to watch people do this for Obama? Which is in fact alluded to in the very same piece. Shockingly two faced that is.

Lacewell writes:

Despite writing about race in both of his books, addressing race in the historic Philadelphia speech during the Democratic primary and repeatedly acknowledging that racial inequality endures, Smiley's critique implies that Obama's approach to race is both inadequate and inauthentic.

I haven't read either of Obama's books and probably will not. However; I did watch and critique his philly speech and there was much to fault in that speech. For many people they were shocked and awed by the fact that a candidate had a speech on race. I won't go into it here but I have a detailed discussion on the speech here


Anyway, Lacewell gets to the meat of her ire, a "low production value" film produced in the "Get on the Bus" vein which I'm sure if it were a film made by Obama supporters, would not have warranted the "low production value" commentary, but you know...

I will grant her this, that she points out that the film features "prominent black male public figures" is a great point. These public figures are public figures who, as she also points out have corporate backing. How about a film witl Glen Ford and other non-corporate blessed thinkers and writers who can more than hold their own in the political arena? It's a valid point that she makes.


Lacewell writes:

The film and its participants (two of them my senior colleagues at Princeton University) appropriated the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. to implicitly claim that they, not Obama, are the authentic representatives of the political interests of African-Americans. They used King's images and speeches, gathered on the balcony where King was assassinated, and explicitly asserted their desire to play King to Obama's LBJ, and Frederick Douglass to Obama's Lincoln.

On its face, this is not a bad model. Presidents are deeply constrained by the structural and political limitations of their office. A robust administration needs an active and informed citizenry to engage, push, cajole, criticize and applaud its efforts.

But this appropriation misrepresents rather than preserves King's legacy. King was a powerful questioner and, at times, ally of President Johnson because he was at the helm of a massive social movement of men and women who were shut out of the ordinary political process. It was not King's intellectual capacity or verbal dexterity that made him an effective advocate for racial issues; it was his own accountability to that movement.

This particular part gets to my earlier point about the George Jeffersons vs. the Malcom X's. I used to despise Dr. King. I say this openly. Just as I despised Booker T. Washington. as a youth, unlearned, unread and under-experienced, I thought that Dr. King's whole Dream bullshit was just that. I could not stand what I saw as a begging black man preacher. What? I'm supposed to let people hit me? Forget that! It wasn't until I really studied Dr. King past the I have a Dream speech that is pushed on the public, that I came to respect the man. Dr. king, when he was killed, was moving much closer to Malcolm X, and Kwame Ture, then anything that the I have a Dream speech indicates. The Riverside church speech is highly indicative of that shift. The shift that made many people in and out of government to label him a communist and the like. But what struck me the most was a quote from Dr. King that said:

We have no desire to integrate into this society

It became clear to me that Dr. King understood that which Malcolm and Garvey understood: There needed to be a fundamental structural change in society, including government. That the aims of the movement he was involved in, was not to simply get access to power. So when I, and I suppose Tavis, et al. bring up the legacy of Dr. King. they are not necessarily reminiscing about the good old days, but rather they are stating their concerns about black America straying from the moral principles of the civl rights movement in their quest for power. And if it is indeed a wish to simply be in power (as Lacewell appears to state in so many words) then it is indeed a betrayal of not only Dr. King, but of the movement that has gotten African -Americans where they are today.

Since I brought up Booker T., let me discuss him for a minute. Most black people revile the Atlanta Compromise speech that Washington gave. The whole 5 fingers and we don't want political power thing. It wasn't until I got to Tuskegee and saw what Washington was up against that I understood why he could make such a statement. Do we not see in South Africa, how that blacks have political power but still live in shanty towns? Do blacks in Harlem have the vote, but still find themselves priced out of business opportunities and real estate? Booker T. Washington understood that a community that has no means to be self-sufficient will be at the mercy of those who have the ability to not only take care of themselves but also to enough to take on someone else as well. Furthermore; at that time Tuskegee was completely dependent on money from white folk. White folk who generally were not receptive to the idea that black folk had the capacity to play on the big field. in the book 48 Laws of Power we learn that one means of getting that which you need from a patron is to play upon his or her weaknesses. White folk, particularly at that time, but not too much less so today, eat up talk that makes them comfortable in their supposed privilege. Therefore it would be best to play to that in order to get what one wants. Booker T. apparently succeeded at doing that. Since he built something for black folk, I'm not going to kick the man over that.

OK, going back to Lacewell. when she points out that King was accountable to "that movement." She highlights an issue that is important when dealing with Obama. Obama came out of nowhere. Really outside of Chicago, who the heck knew who he was in the black community? This has been an issue highlighted in publications like Black Agenda Report. Obama hit the stage in 2004 and boom 4 years later president. Shocking but true. No other black candidate with high name recognition among black people, who have political experience has been able to do such a thing. That fact should make people ask a lot of questions. So relatively speaking, Tavis, et al. have far more accountability than is suggested. But accountability does not mean one stays quiet.

Lacwell writes:

Further, Smiley and his "soul patrol" seemed to have missed the intervening 40 years between the era of King and the election of Obama. African-Americans are no longer fully disfranchised subjects of an oppressive state.

African-Americans are now citizens capable of running for office, holding officials accountable through democratic elections, publicly expressing divergent political preferences and, most importantly, engaging the full spectrum of American political issues, not only narrowly racial ones. The era of racial brokerage politics, when the voices of a few men stood in for the entire race, is now over. And thank goodness it is over. Black politics is growing up.

I think it disingenuous to say the the "soul patrol" missed the last 40 years. As discussed earlier I believe the issue is what has occurred in the past 40 years. The question they are posing, well let me not speak for them, The question I am posing and have been for some time now, is what are these "enfranchised subjects" doing and thinking? Going back to the Harlem example; if you have all these black political leaders and Harlem still gets gentrified, then what's the use? If the black president is as imperial as the white one, then the whole moral issues raised by the Civil Rights movement gets dropped. Is that a good thing? While it may be a good thing that voices of a "few men stood for the entire race." Is it a good thing when new sanitized voices are the replacements? I still have not seen any other than the George Jefferson left regularly on TV so I'd like to know how this multi-voiced new black polity is representing black folk in an effective manner. And let us be clear, Lacewell. Tavis, West and Dyson represent cases of "respectable" black voices but by no means represent the "entirety" of black thought to the public.

I wont go into Lacewell's analysis of the Obama campaign. it was, contrary to her words, slick and media generated. Heck I wrote about one of the very impressive campaign adverts that the Obama camp came out with as well as very well structured YouTube videos and the like all of which sent very emotionally charged messages out to people. Very little of that campaign was directed at black folk. The message to black folk was clear: Black, Democrat, who whites will vote for. There are long time activists who are on record stating they could care less what the man was doing, they just wanted a black person in the white house. At least she was honest.

To close I want to point out that in my opinion Obama was not and is not the turning point for black politics and political thought. I think the travails of Cynthia McKinney are much more indicative of what has gone terribly wrong in Black America. It seems that the new cohort of black leadership has been cowered into a position where they cannot advocate openly for black people. They are almost embarrassed to do so unless some really obviously racial stuff happens. They have bought into the notion that in seeking wider office, they cannot be seen as too "black" even when their white counterparts have no such burden of expected "less-whiteness." That clear double standard does not bother them in the least bit. Like Obama's Philly speech, they need to explain away the "antics" of black folks, rather than challenge the racism of others. And why do they do this? It is clear: It pays

White Supremacists in Wells Fargo?

The NY Times has a piece on a lawsuit brought by the city of Baltimore against Wells Fargo. Of particular interest to me is the language that was allegedly used in the company "servicing" blacks:

“They referred to subprime loans made in minority communities as ghetto loans and minority customers as ‘those people have bad credit’, ‘those people don’t pay their bills’ and ‘mud people,’ ” Mr. Paschal said in his affidavit.

Now the only place that I read or hear the phrase "mud people" used in among White Supremacist organizations. I've known for a long while now that many white supremacists are gainfully employed in various companies and instead of the stereotypical skinhead, black jacket, tatted up persona popularized by sensationalist news media, they are well or "average" dressed men and women who could be your cubicle-mate.

So I'm wondering whether there will be any digging into the backgrounds of these individuals using such coded language

RE: Justices Gone Wild

By Ross Douthat asserts that the Supreme Court

"gradually become a kind of extra legislative body — a nine-person super-Senate graced with the power of the veto, where liberals and conservatives alike turn when they’re confounded in the Congress."

Asserting that the High Court has overturned an increasing number of state and federal laws. Me thinks this fellow's concern is misplaced. The issue as I see it is with legislatures who create and pass laws that are clearly unconstitutional in attempts to mollify some segment of the voting population rather than showing actual leadership and saying: "No. This is America, We don't do that."

For example we have the case of Terry Shiavio (II, III). That the Federal government saw that it had any business in the personal end of life decision of a private citizen was a clear sign that certain members of congress have no clue as to what their actual job is.

Attempts to ban pornography clearly runs afoul the constitution, yet without fail some legislator somewhere tries to pass a law (and sometimes succeeds) only to be struck down later wasting taxpayer money.

Attempts to ban violent video games clearly run afoul the constitution, yet laws are passed and struck down at taxpayer expense.

If anything the problem is not with the Supreme Court asserting some legislative power, but instead the problem is with legislatures who write and pass laws that are clearly unconstitutional. Perhaps if law makers stopped pandering to certain groups the Supreme Court would have less intervening to do.