Bizarro World

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

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

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

The Public Erasure of Black Women in Brazil

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

OK?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Really?

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

Blow away. Even with her hair in rollers.

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

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

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

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

Garvey's Ghost TV 6-7-2010

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

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

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

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

The Only Way He Could Get Her Attention?

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

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

Garvey's Ghost TV 5-24-2010

What Rand Paul Would Likely Get Right

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

Yup.

Counterpunch

In Other News

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

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


Al Sharpton apparently approves of Obama's silence.

Police State in NYC

Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report lays it out:

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

Garvey's Ghost TV 5-10-2010

RIP a Real Black Man

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

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

Arizona Is NYC

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Just like they do in NYC.

By the time I get to Arizona

Planet Grenada:

Garvey's Ghost TV 4-26-2010

Part 1:



Part 2:


Part 3:

The Middle Class Game is Up

A fine quote from a good read in Alternet:

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

Immigration and African- Americans

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

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

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

WDSU

A Queen in Nigeria

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Anyway, a decent read.

LA Times

Garvey's Ghost TV 4-12-2010

Part 1:


Part 2:

UV Protection

Honestly I had thought of similarly themed commercials.

For Hip Hop News & Entertainment at DimeWars.Com

African American Unemployment 19%

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

Dallas South Blog

Japanese-African children in the Congo

From Dime-Wars via France 24:

For Hip Hop News & Entertainment at DimeWars.Com