This culture warrior is a convicted felon.

There is a certain amount of irony that goes along with a man who makes a film about the beauty of America being a convicted felon.


I would love America too if I could steal money and make a movie about conservative values and be a hero to the folks who espouse said values.


This fascinating paradox is brought to you by one Dinesh D'Souza. You remember him, right? He is the guy who made a hit movie among conservatives which questioned the president's patriotism and his legitimacy.


Now he wants to make another one.

"Dinesh D’Souza, the conservative filmmaker and activist who recently plead guilty to campaign finance fraud charges, plans to premiere a 10-minute clip from his new film, titled simply America, during his appearance Saturday night at the 2014 Republican Leadership Conference. But before then, he released the two-minute teaser below, which shows D’Souza “soaring over America” in a helicopter as inspirational music plays in the background.


The new film, accompanied by a book of same name, is a follow-up to his 2012 documentary, 2016: Obama’s America, which became a surprise hit among conservative audiences. America, which will be released widely on July 2, takes a broader view than the previous anti-Obama film, focusing on his belief that the “notion of the essential goodness of America is under attack.”


D’Souza released the teaser clip to The Hollywood Reporter Saturday afternoon, saying he wanted to produce the film because currently “the left is winning the cultural war.”


“Republicans treat politics as a hobby while the left engages more in academia, culture and the media,” D’Souza continued. “Conservatives have been politically outmatched because they’re not fighting on their natural battlefield."


"Their natural battlefield". That would be anywhere where there are a lot of very white people, big bibles, and even bigger guns. Sounds like a real hoot.


Anyway, Dinesh has always been somewhat of a dick.


Outing your Gay classmates at a time when society viewed Gays in a totally different way is not cool.  


What would be kind of cool is if one of those old classmates was in the US Attorney's office that prosecuted him.


"D'Souza's extremism traces back to his college days, when he was an editor of the Dartmouth Review, the leading conservative college publication of the early 1980s. (Wendy Long was a Dartmouth student and served as a trustee of the Review in the 1990s.) In that post, D'Souza became a hero to young conservatives across the nation (and the right-wing foundations looking to fund them). While he helmed the Review, it published a "lighthearted interview with a former Klan leader"—accompanied by a staged photo of a black person hanging from a tree—and an assault on affirmative action titled, "Dis Sho Ain't No Jive, Bro," which was written in Ebonics. ("Now we be comin' to Dartmut and be up over our 'fros in studies, but we still be not graduatin' Phi Beta Kappa.") The "Jive" article caused Jack Kemp, a conservative icon mindful of the right's problems with minority outreach, to resign from the Review's advisory board. Decades later, it's clear that D'Souza chose the path of the foul at an early point."


Yo Dinesh, I think you all are losing the "cultural wars" because conservatives are such assholes.


*Pic from Mother Jones.

The King of New Jersey, and Phil talks to some of his closest friends.

So let me get this straight; Governor Krispy Kreme cut payments to pension plans in New Jersey and delayed property tax rebates. And yet, he gave 27 (TWENTY SEVEN) of his own staff members raises, recently.


  "Gov. Chris Christie in the last two months gave raises to the staff members who run his press shop, his schedule and his public appearances, according to a report by The Record.


Of the 27 staff members who got their salary bumped, 24 are aides who set the stage at his town halls, handle his image in the media or schedule his events.
Some of the biggest raises went to Kevin Roberts, a spokesman for the governor, and Dan Robles, a personal assistant who travels with Christie. Each started receiving an extra $35,000 this year, according to data obtained by The Record.


After leaving government last year to serve as a spokesman for Christie's re-election campaign, Roberts is now back in the governor's office as a deputy communications director earning $110,000 a year. Robles is now the director of planning, making $115,000 a year.


"Changes in salary in the main reflect changes in position, promotions, or expanded job responsibilities for these staff members," Christie spokesman Michael Drewniak told the newspaper. (Drewniak's salary was bumped up nearly 4 percent, to $134,000 a year.)"


It must be nice to be King.


Meanwhile the poor people of New Jersey who suffered through Hurricane Sandy have still not been made whole.


Finally, congrats to the folks who put together the republican Leadership Conference for getting a real live television star to appear for their big get together in the Big Easy. (No, not Donald, although he was there as well.)


My man Phil Robertson, who declared that the Negro was doing pretty good back in the Jim Crow days, was talking Jesus, the bible, and  guns to his fellow travelers.    

"Phil Robertson, star of the A&E network’s hit reality television series “Duck Dynasty,” came to New Orleans on Thursday preaching the Bible and the gun to a group of jubilant Republicans.


He had a few words for President Barack Obama as well. “We’re up against evil like I’ve never seen in my life,” he said. “I’m sitting there and I’m thinking, ‘What’s coming out of the White House?’ The only thing I can tell you folks is it’s just downright embarrassing.”


Robertson was catapulted into conservative politics last year after A&E briefly suspended him for making disparaging remarks about homosexuals and suggesting in a GQ magazine interview that blacks in the South were happy during the Jim Crow era. But he offered no new grist for scandal in New Orleans on Thursday, quoting George Washington and John Adams to bolster his case that America is a Christian nation, but keeping well within the GOP tent in his views on the separation of church and state." [Source]


But there seemed to be some good that came from Phil's speech to the faithful.


"He even went out of his way to discourage racist attitudes. 'There’s one race on this planet, and it’s called the human race,' he said. 'Therefore you have no right to color-code anyone. We’re all the same family.”'


You tell em Uncle Phil. And you are just a walking billboard for tolerance. Not!






 

More strange words from the house.

Black conservatives are sure making themselves look conspicuously unintelligent these days.


First there was my fellow SDA brother, Ben Carson, saying that the VA scandal is a "gift from God".


How, exactly, is the suffering of these poor veterans because of bureaucratic incompetence a gift? I mean when the very conservative folks over at Townhall declare that the remarks were "tone- deaf" you might have a problem.


This is what the good Doctor said:


"I think what's happening with the veterans is a gift from God to show us what happens when you take layers and layers of bureaucracy and place them between the patients and the health care provider....


...And if we can't get it right, with the relatively small number of veterans, how in the world with are you going to do it with the entire population?"


And this guy is thinking of running for president? This is the kind of blind rhetoric that has made politics in this country (particularly the politics of those in a certain political party) a running joke. 


Then there is Ken Blackwell. You all remember Ken, right? He is the slave catcher from Ohio, who as that state's Secretary of State orchestrated voter fraud to deliver that state to George W. Bush in 2004.


Mr. Blackwell has declared that same sex marriage is to blame for the UCSB shootings.

"Blackwell discussed the recent UCSB shootings during a radio interview with FRC president Tony Perkins (of course), and suggested that, of all things, marriage equality was responsible for Elliot Rodger’s rampage last week that left seven people dead. Blackwell, the former Republican mayor of Cincinnati, blamed the shootings on “the teaching of sexual roles and the development of human sexuality in our culture.


“When these fundamental institutions are attacked and destroyed and weakened and abandoned, you get what we are now seeing, and that is a flood of disturbed people in our society that are causing great pain,” he continued." [Source]


Riiight, because in the good old days when we were all god fearing Christians we could lynch those Negroes with no fear of answering for our actions and treat them worse than we did our pets.


"He [Blackwell] also hinted that America didn’t want to have the conversation about how gay marriage is turning kids into psychopaths, and instead turn to “blaming the Second Amendment, or blaming knives, or blaming cars… This is a convenient way of avoiding what is the root cause.”


Please just shut up and go back in the house.

Niger and Raynard speak from the house.

There are some Negroes in America that I will never understand. And for those of you who say that I rip some of these slave catching conservative Negroes because they are republicans, I say nothing could be further from the truth.


I happen to respect some black conservatives---- my man Lenny McAllister comes to mind---- And I have blogged about republicans of color who are putting in work in the hood in the past, and believe me; if more of these conservative Negroes out here were like that, I would be praising them as well.


Sadly, though, we have to deal with Negroes like Niger Innis. (Yes, that's really his name.) This dumb Negro wants the world to know that Cliven Bundy is not a racist. How does he know? Well apparently Mr. and Mrs. Bundy had him over for milk and cookies, and after feeling his hair to see if it was really coarse, they declared to him that he is one of the good Negroes....Ok, the patting on the hair part didn't happen, but it's not such a stretch to say that it could have.


"Niger Innis, a former Herman Cain adviser and frequent Hannity guest, is currently running to represent Nevada’s 4th congressional district, which just happens to be the home of Cliven Bundy’s disputed ranch. At an event Saturday, Innis offered up a strong defense of Bundy, saying that contrary to popular opinion, the rancher is not “racist at all.”


As he made his way to the podium, Innis embraced Bundy, who was seated to his right as he delivered some brief remarks. He described how he met Bundy in the midst of his tense stand-off with the federal government over unpaid grazing fees. After charming the crowd in attendance with a story about how Bundy’s wife insisted on serving him a sandwich, Innis turned more serious.


“This is the game the media is going to play with us to distract from the real issue, which is that the federal government has too much control over Nevada’s land,” Innis said. “They will try to distract, with the firestorm that Cliven started by using the r-word, the racism word.”


“I can only tell you my experience with the Bundys,” he continued. “Having eaten with them and broken bread with them and I don’t consider Cliven or his wonderful family racist at all. Period, end of story.” {Source}


Lord have mercy!


As bad as ole Niger was, this other Negro might be even worse. His name is Raynard Jackson. (Maybe these Negroes became angry conservatives because of all the teasing they got for their names as children. Raynard?!)


Anyway, here is what Raynard had to say:


"Black women constantly complain about the dearth of “eligible” Black men to date and marry.  Noted sociologist William Julius Wilson has argued that “the increasing levels of non-marriage and female-headed households is a manifestation of the high levels of economic dislocation experienced by lower-class Black men in recent decades.”


He further argued that, “When joblessness is combined with high rates of incarceration and premature mortality among Black men; it becomes clearer that there are fewer marriageable black men relative to black women who are able to provide the economic support needed to sustain a family.”


Then you add in the unfortunate increase in homosexuality within the Black community and you have a recipe for disaster.


This is why Black men need more White women like Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham.  Even though they are conservative media personalities, they have done more to promote the well-being of Black males than many of the very women who stridently complain about the lack of “eligible” Black men.
Coulter is a friend and I find her comments regarding the Black community very insightful.  Look at what she said two years ago on “This Week with George Stephanopoulos.” She said, “Groups on the left, from feminists to gay rights groups to those defending immigrants, have commandeered the Black civil rights experience.”


She continued, “I think what – the way liberals have treated Blacks like children and many of their policies have been harmful to Blacks, at least they got the beneficiary group right. There is the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow laws. We don’t owe the homeless. We don’t owe feminists. We don’t owe women who are desirous of having abortions, but that’s — or — or gays who want to get married to one another. That’s what civil rights has become for much of the left.”


Stephanopoulos asked, “Immigrant rights are not civil rights?”  Coulter responded, “Civil rights are for Blacks…what have we done to immigrants?  We owe Black people something…We have a legacy of slavery.  Immigrants haven’t even been in this country.”


Earlier this year, she said, “I mean my whole life I’ve heard Republicans hate Black people, I’ve never seen any evidence of it until I read Marco Rubio’s amnesty bill. We are the party that has always stood up for African-Americans.  Who gets hurt the most by amnesty, by continuing these immigration policies it is low-wage workers, it is Hispanics, it is Blacks.”


I don’t know Ingraham personally, but I like what she had to say last month about Democrats and Blacks.


“[Congressman] Steve Israel is reprehensible in what he said [on alleged racism in the Republican Party]…Nancy Pelosi, throw her into the ring [for similar comments]…I say this is a race to the bottom…The Democrats have failed the Black youth in this country with their terrible economic approach. Do we call that racist?


“…They turn their heads away from the millions upon millions of Black babies slaughtered in the womb over 10 years… Is that racist?…Is it racist that they allow inner cities to continue to crumble as families decay across the board in America – especially hard hit is African-American families…It is reprehensible and it’s all about November…This is not about ‘They care about Black people.’ They care about their majority eroding away.”


So, let me make sure I understand.  Black women complain about the state of “eligible” Black males to date and marry, yet they support the policies of a president who is going to make the problem much worse" {Source}


The title of Raynard's post was "Why Black Men Need More White Women".


Nuff said.

Take the racism quiz.

Yo Field, I know that you are always chasing racism, but how does a poor white person know if I they are a racist or not?


That's a fair question, and it is one that I am all too glad to help my friends in the majority population with.


And just to show you what a nice guy I am; I have prepared a racism quiz to help you out.


Here goes: (No peeking at the answers, please)


1. Your son (daughter) goes off to college, and they surprise the entire family by bringing their African American girlfriend (boyfriend) home for Thanksgiving.


What do you do?


A. After fainting you ask for a glass of water.
B. You hurry and try to prepare some macaroni & cheese and watermelon for your child's new friend.
C. You pull your child's new friend to the side and try to figure out how serious the relationship is.
D. You ask to talk to her (his) parents.


2. Black folks using the N-word to each other really bothers you.


A. Because you want to use it yourself and you are sick of the double standard.
B. Because you heard it so much as a child and you didn't have a happy             childhood.
C. Because you only associate the word with gangsta rappers.
D. Because you really do find the word offensive.


3. When you see an extremely articulate black person on television you


A. Think it's a white person in black makeup.
B. Think to yourself: They must have been adopted by a white family.
C. Wonder to yourself when Denzel started making commercials.
D. Figure they must be from California.


4. You are stuck in traffic on the highway and late for a very important meeting. There is an exit coming up that will get you around the traffic. The only catch is that it goes through a very black neighborhood. What do you do?


A. Say that the traffic isn't really that bad after all and settle in.
B. Get on the cell phone and call the people at the meeting and let them know that you will probably be late.
C. You check with your crime app on your cell phone to see just how bad the area is.
D. You lock your car doors and go for it.


5. Since Barack Obama became president it has been


A. Hell for all white males.
B. Hell for the country.
C. Hell for republicans.
D. Hell for terrorists named Osama.


6. My favorite kind of music is


A. Anything that doesn't have that black jungle beat in it.
B. Country, because it shows the real pain of working class whites.
C. Blues, because it shows the real pain of the Mississippi Delta.
D. Reggae, because it just makes me want to light up.


7.  The Klan is


A. Misunderstood.
B. Need a serious makeover.
C. Not as popular as you think.
D. Everywhere in thought. 


8. When I see a group of black males approaching I cross the street or hold on to my purse tighter if


A. No ifs. I just do it.
B. There are two or more.
C. There are three or more.
D. They are wearing hoodies.


9. This "white privilege" debate is just


A. More liberal BS to make white males look bad.
B. Created by black people to get more goodies.
C. So confusing.
D. Not relevant to all white people.


10. All black people like fried chicken.


A) True
b) False


11. All black people can dance.


A) True
B) False


12. Those commercials with at least one black couple or black person is a true reflection of my reality.


A) True
B) False 


13. I have never visited another country and don't want to.


A) True
B) False


14. In 25 years we won't know America anymore.


A) True
B) False


15. I have started a sentence like this in the past: I don't want to sound like a racist but....


A) True
B) False




Answers:


All A answers get 0 points.
All B answers get 2 points.
All C answers get 3 points.
All D answers get 4 points.


#10 Is True; if you got it give yourself 3 points.
#11 Is False; if you got it give yourself 3 points.
#12 If you selected True give yourself 5 points.
#13 If you selected False give yourself 3 points. 
#14 If you selected False give yourself 3 points.
#15 If you selected False give yourself 5 points. 


If you got less than 10 points you should leave now, as I am sure that you are late for a Klan meeting somewhere.


If you got between 10-30 points, you might not be out marching in sheets and a hood, but you are at home cheering them on.


If you got between 30-40 points, congratulations, you represent most of the people in America.


If you got over 40 points your honorable Field Negro card is in the mail.

Blaming others for your misery, and when so called Christians do unchistianlike things.

I thought I knew a lot about popular culture and what's on the Internet. But then this creep goes on a shooting rampage out in Cali, and now I am learning about a website called PuaHate . This is a site where losers who can't pick up women or find dates go to vent about how cruel the world is to them, and how the evil Negro and insert anyone or anything, here:_____ is making it hard for them to pick up women. (I bet Benito is a regular on PuaHate.)


Elliot Rodgers left misogynist and racist rants on PuaHate, which left clues of what he was about to do. Sadly, because there are so many guys like Elliot Rodgers out there, we just weren't paying attention.


"So what exactly is PuaHate, the place where Rodger posted about his “race-inducing” jealousy over seeing a “black guy chilling with 4 hot white girls”? In May of 2012, Jezebel published a a profile of the underground movement, which as the image above states, aims to reveal “the scams, deception, and misleading marketing techniques used by dating gurus and the seduction community to deceive men and profit from them.” Essentially, it’s a place where man can go to commiserate with other man who have been left disillusioned by the supposed “art” of “picking up” women." [Source]


Soooo, in other words, it's a website for losers (kind of like Stormfront, American Thinker, and SBPDL) who blame others for their misery. Got it.


Memo to PuaHate guys out there: If you are having trouble picking up women, it has nothing to do with your looks; instead, it just might be that women can sense a creep from miles away.


Finally, I have to rip a (so called) Christian.


Someone should remind Reginald Wayne Miller that forced labor camps are not cool, even if you do it under the guise of Christianity.


"A South Carolina pastor has been accused of turning his Bible College into a forced labor camp for foreign students.


Reginald Wayne Miller, 65, allegedly made the teens toil for no or little pay for more than 50 hours a week while housing them in rooms without hot water, heating or air-conditioning.


He is also alleged to have threatened to revoke their student visas if they complained or failed to comply with his demands.


Miller, who runs the Cathedral Bible College in Marion, was arrested 2 a.m. Thursday.


Federal prosecutors had filed a criminal complaint accusing him of forced labor." [Source]


I think a quote from the bible is apropos:


"We know that the judgment of God rightly falls on those who practice such things. " ~Romans 2:2~


Hopefully the judgment of the federal government will fall on him as well.




*Let's remember our Veterans who gave the ultimate sacrifice today. 

Mississippi on my mind.

Tonight my racism chase takes me to Mississippi. It is a state whose history is steeped in bigotry and racism, and a place where they obviously have a long way to go before they can say that they have arrived in the 21st Century.


"A judge in central Mississippi slapped a young black man in the back of the head and yelled 'Run, n----r, run,' the teen’s parents claim in a police report.
The allegations against Madison County Justice Court judge Bill Weisenberger, who is white, will be weighed by a grand jury.


'“This is 2014,' said former Canton mayor William Truly, who now heads the local NAACP, according to The Clarion-Ledger. (It’s) 'not 1960, where someone could slap a young man and call out “run n-----, run.'


Weisenberger was moonlighting as a security officer at the Canton Flea Market when the incident allegedly occurred two weeks ago.


Eric Rivers, 20, was asking for work at the open-air market when Weisenberger accosted him, the young man’s parents said in their complaint.


Truly demanded that Weisenberger step down at a news conference on Friday.
'No citizen should have to face justice before a judge who holds such a high degree of racial animus and hatred,' he said.


Flea market vendor Cathy Hendrix told the newspaper she and others routinely rely on locals who help unload goods."


My first thought is that they don't pay judges too well in Mississippi if the guy is moonlighting as a security guard at a flea market.


My second thought is that this poor young man was actually looking for work which is what we always encourage young people to do in this country.


A young black man can't win for losing in Mississippi.


Finally, I will stay in the state of Mississippi for my next story.


There is dirty politics and there is really dirty and low down politics. It looks like in Mississippi the Tea Party folks like their politics really low down and really dirty. This one has even the folks in Chicago and Louisiana shaking their heads.


"Three more people have arrested in connection with the photographing of U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran's (R-MS) wife, Rose, who is a patient in a Madison, Mississippi nursing home.


Mark Mayfield (pictured right), a member of the board of directors for the Central Mississippi Tea Party, was arrested Thursday, according to the Clarion Ledger of Mississippi.


At around 2:34 PM EDT Clarion-Ledger editor Sam Hall tweeted that the second arrest on Thursday in connection to the "Constitutional Clayton" photographing case was Richard Sager of Laurel.


A little more than an hour later The Clarion Ledger reported that a third suspect, John Mary (pictured above) was charged for conspiracy in connection to Kelly. Police confirmed later in the day that Mary had been arrested but then "his own recognizance due to extensive medical conditions after consulting with his attorney and the Madison/Rankin County District Attorney’s Office."


...Kelly supports state Sen. Chris McDaniel, Cochran's tea party primary challenger. Mayfield appears to be a McDaniel supporter as well and, according to the Clarion Ledger's Sam Hall, contributed $500 to McDaniel and served as an active volunteer on his campaign.


Authorities claim Kelly photographed Rose Cochran at St. Catherine's nursing home in Madison, where she is bedridden and suffering from progressive dementia. Kelly, a political blogger and McDaniel supporter, allegedly used the photo in a video he posted online." [Source]


So three people are arrested for going into a nursing home and taking pictures of a political opponent's bed ridden and dying wife and later posting her pictures on the Internet.  The story is as sick and twisted as it sounds.


Then, to make it worse, the person who is the center of this entire mess did a horrible job of trying to explain himself and his campaign's ignorance of the whole matter.


Mississippi isn't burning, but sometimes we sure wish that it would.












 


 


  

A "drive-by" in Santa Barbara.

I wonder if Mark Cuban is going to cross the street if he sees a wealthy young white dude who just got out of a German sedan coming towards him.




Seriously dude? You drive a Bob Marley Wagon in Cali, your dad is a Hollywood director, and yet you kill six people because you have a hard time getting a date? Unbelievable!

"Authorities searching for a motive were looking into a video posted on social media that contains a man's tirade against women who supposedly rebuffed him, Brown told the station. Hoover said the suspect has been preliminarily identified but his name won't be released until "a positive identification is made."

Part of that evidence appears to be a chilling YouTube video titled "Retribution" posted by a young man who rants for nearly seven minutes against women who he says ignored and rejected him.

"Tomorrow is the day of retribution. The day in which I will have my revenge against humanity, against all of you," the man said.

In the video, the man lays out a play to kill blond sorority girls." {Source}

"Blond sorority girls? Lord have mercy! No one is safe these days. I mean if you are a "blond sorority girl" you are a part of the safest group in America.

"Witness Robert Johnson told CNN he was standing on a corner when he heard what he thought were fireworks. Then a black BMW with tinted windows drove by and either slowed down or stopped outside a deli where as many as eight people were eating outside."

A drive- by in Santa Barbara. Man that's a long way from South Central.

At least it is in terms of geography.


Finally, I swear these Tea Party folks will do anything to get to Obama.


Did you hear the one about the naked guy at the White House gate?


"Police have arrested a man in front of the White House after he reportedly got naked and tried to hop the fence, reports say.


Photos of the arrest show at least four Secret Service agents pinning the nude man to the sidewalk after he tried to get by security and assaulted an officer on Friday afternoon.


The unidentified man left nothing to the imagination as he stripped all the way down to his socks at one of the security gates at about 3 p.m. after he was denied entrance to the White House, according to the Daily Caller.


The man was adamanat that he had an appointment with the President Obama as he yelled and removed his boxers, the Caller reported. That was seconds before his naked body was tackled to the ground.


The officers clothed him with a simple blanket and packed him away into the back of a van." {Source}


Hey at least he wasn't shot to death like this poor lady. She also thought that she had an appointment with the president. He will live to tell us all what he was high on. Sadly, we will never know her true story.

A change of heart about reparations.

Before I post the thought provoking and excellent post from Ta-Nehisi Coates, let me tell you what the racism apologist and trolls will say after reading it.


"My ancestors came over from Ireland and Italy and they were treated like second class citizens themselves."


"My ancestors never owned slaves, why should I be blamed for what happened to them?"


"Haven't we done enough for blacks in this country?"


"I am offended that I would be asked to give anything to blacks when my ancestors spilled their blood in the civil war."


"There are no slaves living today,"


Did I leave anything out?


Anyway, here is the article:


"The best thing about writing a blog is the presence of a live and dynamic journal of one's own thinking. Some portion of the reporter's notebook is out there for you to scrutinize and think about as the longer article develops. For me, this current article—an argument in support of reparations—began four years ago when I opposed reparations. A lot has happened since then. I've read a lot, talked to a lot of people, and spent a lot of time in Chicago where the history, somehow, feels especially present. I think I owe you a walk-through on how my thinking evolved. 


When I wrote opposing reparations I was about halfway through my deep-dive into the Civil War. I roughly understood then that the Civil War—the most lethal conflict in American history—boiled down to the right to raise an empire based on slaveholding and white supremacy. What had not yet clicked for me was precisely how essential enslavement was to America, that its foundational nature explained the Civil War's body count.  The sheer value of enslaved African-Americans is just astounding. And looking at this recent piece by Chris Hayes, I'm wondering if my numbers are short (emphasis added):

In order to get a true sense of how much wealth the South held in bondage, it makes far more sense to look at slavery in terms of the percentage of total economic value it represented at the time. And by that metric, it was colossal. In 1860, slaves represented about 16 percent of the total household assets—that is, all the wealth—in the entire country, which in today’s terms is a stunning $10 trillion.

 

Ten trillion dollars is already a number much too large to comprehend, but remember that wealth was intensely geographically focused. According to calculations made by economic historian Gavin Wright, slaves represented nearly half the total wealth of the South on the eve of secession. “In 1860, slaves as property were worth more than all the banks, factories and railroads in the country put together,” civil war historian Eric Foner tells me. “Think what would happen if you liquidated the banks, factories and railroads with no compensation.”

As with any economic institution of that size, enslavement grew from simply a question of money to a question of societal, even theological, importance.
I got that in 2011, from Jim McPherson (emphasis again added):

"The conflict between slavery and non-slavery is a conflict for life and death," a South Carolina commissioner told Virginians in February 1861. "The South cannot exist without African slavery." Mississippi's commissioner to Maryland insisted that "slavery was ordained by God and sanctioned by humanity." If slave states remained in a Union ruled by Lincoln and his party, "the safety of the rights of the South will be entirely gone."

If these warnings were not sufficient to frighten hesitating Southerners into secession, commissioners played the race card. A Mississippi commissioner told Georgians that Republicans intended not only to abolish slavery but also to "substitute in its stead their new theory of the universal equality of the black and white races." 

Georgia's commissioner to Virginia dutifully assured his listeners that if Southern states stayed in the Union, "we will have black governors, black legislatures, black juries, black everything." 

An Alabamian born in Kentucky tried to persuade his native state to secede by portraying Lincoln's election as "nothing less than an open declaration of war" by Yankee fanatics who intended to force the "sons and daughters" of the South to associate "with free negroes upon terms of political and social equality," thus "consigning her [the South's] citizens to assassinations and her wives and daughters to pollution and violation to gratify the lust of half-civilized Africans..."
This argument appealed as powerfully to nonslaveholders as to slaveholders. Whites of both classes considered the bondage of blacks to be the basis of liberty for whites. Slavery, they declared, elevated all whites to an equality of status by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. "If slaves are freed," maintained proslavery spokesmen, whites "will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen." 

Enslavement is kind of a big deal—so much so that it is impossible to imagine America without it. At the time I was reading this I was thinking about an essay (which I eventually wrote) arguing against the idea of the Civil War as tragedy. My argument was that the Civil War was basically the spectacular end of a much longer war extending back into the 17th century—a war against black people, their families, institutions and their labor. We call the war "slavery." John Locke helped me with that.


This was all swirling in my head about the time I saw this article in the Times:

On Saturday, more than 15,000 students are expected to file into classrooms to take a grueling 95-question test for admission to New York City’s elite public high schools. (The exam on Sunday, for about 14,000 students, was postponed until Nov. 18 because of Hurricane Sandy.) 

No one will be surprised if Asian students, who make up 14 percent of the city’s public school students, once again win most of the seats, and if black and Hispanic students win few. Last school year, of the 14,415 students enrolled in the eight specialized high schools that require a test for admissions, 8,549 were Asian.  

Because of the disparity, some have begun calling for an end to the policy of using the test as the sole basis of admission to the schools, and last month, civil rights groups filed a complaint with the federal government, contending that the policy discriminated against students, many of whom are black or Hispanic, who cannot afford the score-raising tutoring that other students can. The Shis, like other Asian families who spoke about the exam in interviews in the past month, did not deny engaging in extensive test preparation. To the contrary, they seemed to discuss their efforts with pride.

I was sort of horrified by this piece, because what the complaint seemed to be basically arguing for was punishing a group of people (Asian immigrants) who were working their asses off. It struck me that these were exactly the kind of people you want if you're building a country. Even though I am arguing for reparations, I actually believe in a playing field—a level playing field, no doubt—but one with actual competition. It struck me as wrong to punish people for working really hard to succeed in that competition.

This paragraph, in particular, got me:

Others take issue with the exam on philosophical grounds. “You shouldn’t have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school,” said Melissa Santana, a legal secretary whose daughter Dejanellie Falette has been prepping this fall for the exam. “That’s extreme.”

I was stewing reading this. It offended some of my latent nationalism—the basic sense that you want everyone on your "team" to go out there and fight. But as I thought about it I felt that there was something underneath the mother's point. In fact there are people who don't "have to prep Sunday to Sunday, to get into a good high school." But they tend to live in neighborhoods that have historically excluded children with names like Dejanellie. Why is that? Housing policy. What are the roots of our housing policy? White supremacy. What are the roots of white supremacy in America? Justification for enslavement.

 

A few days later I sent the following rambling memo to my editor, Scott Stossel:

> Hey Scott. I have an essay that's starting to brew in me that I've been thinking a lot about. Are you at all interested in a piece that makes the case for reparations? This is totally pie in the sky, but it's my take on the Atlantic as a journal of "Big Ideas." There's this great piece in the Times a few weeks back about selective schools in New York and how Asian immigrants are dominating the process. I found myself really compelled by a lot of the stories and actually in more sympathy with the Asians (now Asian-Americans) than with the blacks who were protesting. A lot of what they were saying reminded me of the sort of stuff my own parents said.
>
> And then something occurred to me. The reason why a lot of these black parents are upset is because the schools are basically credentialing machines for the corridors of power. By not going to a Stuyvesant you miss out on that corridor, so the thinking goes. And moreso the feeling is (though never explicitly said) that black people deserve special consideration, given our history in this country. The result is that you have black parents basically lobbying for Asian-American kids to be punished because the country at large has never given much remedy for what it did to black people.
>
> I've thought the same before in reference to gentrification. The notion that DC should remain "black" has always struck me as really bizarre. Very little in America ever stays anything. Change is the nature of things. It only makes sense if you buy that black people are "owed" something. I.E. Since we never got anything for slavery, Jim Crow, red-lining, block-busting, segregation, housing and job discrimination, we at least deserve the stability of neighborhoods and cities we can call home.
>
> I'm thinking about it with the Supreme Court set to dismantle Affirmative Action. Isn't the "diversity" argument actually kind of weak? Isn't the recompensation argument actually much more compelling? Except this was outlawed with Bakke. What I am thinking is right now, at this moment, American institutions (especially its schools) are being asked to answer for the fact that country lacked the courage to do the right thing. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision coming down, in the wake of (what looks like) a second Obama term, we could make a really strong case that now is the time renew a serious discussion about Reparations.
>
> And we could move it beyond "Check in hand" discussion to something more sophisticated. Does this interest you? I actually could see us arguing that Obama has nothing to lose, and should explicitly support such a policy. He ain't gonna do it. But we might--might--be able to make a good faith argument for it.
>
> Any interest?

All of this did not stick. (I don't, for instance, think it would be a good idea for Obama to support reparations. That would actually be a horrible idea.) But by then I had it fully established in my head that we are asking other institutions to answer for something major in our history and culture.


The final piece of this was the uptick in cultural pathology critiques extending from the White House on down. There is massive, overwhelming evidence for the proposition that white supremacy is the only thing wrong with black people.


There is significantly less evidence for the proposition that culture is a major part of what's wrong with black people. But we don't really talk about white supremacy. We talk about inequality, vestigial racism, and culture. Our conversation omits a major portion of the evidence.


The final thing that happened was I became convinced that an unfortunate swath of  popular writers/pundits/intellectuals are deeply ignorant of American history. For the past two years, I've been lucky enough to directly interact with a number of historians, anthropologists, economists, and sociologists in the academy. The debates I've encountered at Brandeis, Virginia Commonwealth, Yale, Northwestern, Rhodes, and Duke have been some of the most challenging and enlightening since I left Howard University. The difference in tenor between those conversations and the ones I have in the broader world, are disturbing. What is considered to be a "blue period" on this blog, is considered to be a survey course among academics. Which is not to say everyone, or even mostly everyone, agrees with me in the academy. It is to say that I've yet to engage a historian or sociologist who's requested that I not be such a downer. 


This process was not as linear as I'm making it out to be. But it all combined to make me feel that mainstream liberal discourse was getting it wrong. The relentless focus on explanations which are hard to quantify, while ignoring those which are not, the subsequent need to believe that America triumphs in the end, led me to believe that we were hiding something, that there was something about ourselves which were loath to say out in public. Perhaps the answer was somewhere else, out there on the ostensibly radical fringes, something dismissed by people who should know better.


People like me. " [Source]


*Pic from The Atlantic

             

Close

 

Sterling light?

"If I see a black kid in a hoodie and it's late at night, I'm walking to the other side of the street. And if on that side of the street, there’s a guy that has tattoos all over his face - white guy, bald head, tattoos everywhere - I’m walking back to the other side of the street." 


That's Dallas owner, Mark Cuban, doing his best Donald Sterling impression.
(I have news for Cuban: If a black kid in a hoodie or a white bald headed kid with tats sees his crazy ass coming, they might switch sides of the street as well.) Although, to be honest, I am glad that he is being honest about his feelings. We don't have enough of that these days. Most people are afraid to discuss their prejudices and face their benighted state of mind, publicly.


Still, as someone who should be worldly and somewhat sophisticated, I am surprised at Cuban's simplistic views about street smarts.


The truth is we all have to practice some level of street smarts. I have been told --that even in my old age--- I look like an NFL linebacker. I am black (not beige) and I have a bald head. So I am sure that if Mark Cuban saw me on a very dark night while I was leaving the gym--- and we were both alone--- he would probably cross to the other side of the street to avoid me.


He says that he would do the same to a bald headed white guy with tattoos, and he would be just as ignorant to do that as well. Unless, of course, he was standing outside of an Aryan or Nazi training camp in the middle of Idaho.


This is also true for the black guy with the hoodie. It's all about where you are and what you are doing. Cuban should know that. And I suspect that he does. Someone like Mark Cuban will never find himself in the type of neighborhood where he would really need to watch his back. I have been in those neighborhoods, and I practice street smarts; not profiling.


But let's be honest, Cuban's views are shared by many, and I am not surprised to see that there are already op-eds  praising his stance.


"Let's be honest, white people don't write or talk publicly about race unless it's to condemn people for being racist. It's easier that way. If we all create a universe where everyone and everything is either racist or not racist, then it's about identifying your camp, you're on one side or the other, either entirely racist or entirely not racist. There's no room for nuance or awkward uncertainty. 


The company line from most white people is this: Racism is bad and we're not racist. In fact, most white people today fear being called racist more than just about anything in the world. How much so? Put it this way, if your average white person had to choose between getting arrested for a DUI or being publicly branded a racist, just about every single one of us would pick getting a DUI. That's right, we'd rather put countless lives in danger, go to jail and face criminal charges than be called a racist in America today.


That's how potent the charge of racism has become.
 
And you know who talks about race less than white people? White people involved in business. Aside from a generalized and glib stance in favor of affirmative action and diversity -- buzz words that frequently translate to insubstantial action -- most white executives would rather be waterboarded than asked for their personal views on race relations. I mean, sure, every CEO in America hates racism; we all know this, right? They abhor it deeply from the depths of their nearly all-white gated communities and the nearly all-white private schools they send their kids to and from the nearly all-white country clubs they play golf in. Why do you even have to ask? These people hate racists. 


Which brings us to Mark Cuban. 


God love Mark Cuban for being an NBA owner who didn't see the ongoing Donald Sterling mushroom cloud and think, "You know what, maybe I'll avoid talking about race today in a business interview. Maybe it's not the right time to talk about who I cross the street to avoid. Maybe it's not the right time to admit that I sometimes judge people based on what they look like."


Nope, Mark Cuban saw all this controversy and thought, "Now's the perfect time for me to talk about race in America today." [Source]


And I am glad that he did. I am glad to know that Marc Cuban is not a racist like Donald Sterling.


Nope, his racism is "nuanced and awkward."








 

"A fine mess."

I have been waiting to weigh in on this VA debate. And I knew that I would have to, because, as was to be expected, the right wing-nuts jumped in head first to criticize O and his administration for all the problems that are currently plaguing that agency.



 

Now the thing you have to understand about the drive- by sound bite mentality of the typical American is that they do not have the ability to process facts and look at any problem in its proper context. Everything is driven by the 24 hour cable punditry class.  It's FOX on one side and MSNBC on the other.

 

This is another classic example. All you will hear from the right is that this looming VA scandal happened on O's watch so he is the only one to blame. This is all because of Obamacare. This is the precursor to death panels. Now this all sounds good for right wing  talk radio and trolls on websites, but nothing could be further from the truth.

 

The VA (I am glad that America is now finally paying attention) and military hospitals have been a problem for some time in this country. Just ask a vet and they will be glad to tell you.

 



Make no mistake, O should take some blame for this happening on his watch as well. But remember, it was the Socialist in chief who made it easier for vets to get treatment for post traumatic stress disorders and exposure to Agent Orange.  As a result, claims rose from 423,000 when he took office, to 883,000 in 2012. It was O and his administration who requested (and got) an additional 54 billion to add to the VA budget.


 

And I actually hate to do this, but I have to get with my man W again. Ok, that was a lie, I don't hate to do it. Anyway, he wanted a war and he got one. But when all the casualties of war started piling up our VA hospitals were not prepared to handle the deluge of claims. Under W the wait times for VA claims went from 166 to 224 days.



 

But it's not only W and O. The current republicans in congress should shoulder some of the blame for this mess we are in as well.



 
I mean how do you explain this, and this, and this, and this, and this ?





It's Obama's fault. Yep, that's the ticket.




*Pic from National Journal
 

 

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

"The times they are a changing."

Let me start this post by welcoming my home state of Pistolvania to the 21st Century. 


Good for Judge John Jones, III, a Bush appointee, (ouch) for ruling that Pistolvania's ban on same sex marriage is unconstitutional. And good for Kathleen Kane, our democratic attorney general, for not defending it.


"The issue we resolve today is a divisive one. Some of our citizens are made deeply uncomfortable by the notion of same-sex marriage. However, that same-sex marriage causes discomfort in some does not make its prohibition constitutional,"


 "Today, in Pennsylvania, the Constitution prevailed. Inequality in any form is unacceptable and it has never stood the test of time," Kane said in a statement. "I have remained steadfast in my decision not to defend Pennsylvania's Defense of Marriage Act because I made a legal determination as to the unconstitutionality of this law."


Poor "Mr. Family Values", Rick Santorum, he actually supported the Judge who made this ruling.  What's a poor holier- than- thou politician to do?


"Attorneys Jones and Conner are highly qualified to assume the important role of Judge and the duty of protecting the Constitution and ensuring the effective operation of our judicial system,” Santorum said. “Since the onset of the war against terrorism, our federal judiciary has taken on an even higher level of importance, and it is imperative that we provide our courts with the resources necessary to enforce the rule of law. These judgeships are vital to our national security goals, and I urge my colleagues to work with the President to fill these vacancies in a timely manner."


This is what happens when you let politics trump your conscience Mr. Santorum.
As a man of faith *eye roll* this decision cannot sit well with you, and yet you supported this very Judge because he was sent up by your political gang.


“The reason the left has gone after same-sex marriage is because it’s a two-fer,” Santorum said. “When you redefine marriage, you cheapen marriage. You make it into something less valuable, less special … [and] it is a sure bet that will undermine faith.” [Source]


Oh my! It looks like the faithful in Pistolvania just got more to worry about.


Just one more state that poor Adam Carolla has to stay away from.

Say what?

Dear Mr. Langone, the picture that goes along with this post is what Adolph Hitler did to fellow human beings during the Holocaust. He was a wicked and truly evil human being.


As a GOP fundraiser and a republican (I know that your peeps love all things Hitler) living comfortably in the 1%, you owe the rest of us an apology for comparing the current president of our country to that man.


Please feel free to look at all of these images and let me know if you stand by your original statement.


Finally, this is why I can't get behind poli-trick-sters; they are such damn hypocrites.


Take for instance Marco Rubio, the bottled water loving senator from Florida.


Marco won't say one way or another whether he smoked the good collie.


Although I am sure that he did hit the spliff at one point in his life. If he didn't, I am pretty sure that he would have said so.  Since he didn't commit to smoking weed, it's a safe bet to say that he did take a toke or two . ----You can't have someone from your past coming out and saying that they had a puff puff pass moment with you back in the day. -----


“If you say that you did, then suddenly there are people out there saying, ‘Well, it’s not a big deal, look at all these successful people who did it,’” Rubio told Karl. “And I don’t want my kids to smoke marijuana, I don’t want other people’s kids to smoke marijuana, I don’t think there’s a responsible way to recreationally use marijuana.”


“On the other side of it is, if you tell people that you didn’t, they won’t believe you.” That is quite a catch-22."


No it's not. Just tell the truth.... Oh wait, never mind. 

Would you like to be my neighbor?

I live on the East Coast of the United States, but I am not one of those people who happens to believe that racism is exclusive to the South or Southwest.




This is why the story about a group of white supremacists setting up shop right next door does not surprise me.



A white supremacist group who call themselves "Advanced White Society" now make their national headquarters in Birmingham, New Jersey. (As if New Jersey doesn't have a bad enough national reputation.) Birmingham is a very small town, I think that there are 33 people living there. (One of them- poor person- happens to be black.)




This creates an interesting dilemma for the political types of Burlington County where the township of Birmingham is located. They want the group out, but if they (AWS) have broken no laws, and are not being a nuisance to their neighbors, they, like everyone else, have every right to be there.




New Jersey, like so many other Northern states, attracts a lot of these hate groups, because racism and ignorance does not have any specific geographical boundary or a preference for a particular region.




The good news is that these groups are declining nationally in numbers. The bad news is why they happen to be declining according to the Southern Poverty Law Center.




"The highest number of hate groups were found in California (77), Texas (57) and Florida (58).


Although the SPLC has documented a decline in the number of groups in existence throughout the country this year, it has also measured a “disturbing dynamic at play,” according to Potok.


“At the same time that the number of extremist groups is dropping, there is more mainstream acceptance of radical-right ideas,”




It makes sense; the more mainstream these groups become the less there is a need for them to organize under a more radical and extreme umbrella.




Why join groups like the Klan and the aforementioned Advanced White Society when you can find like minded people who are better organized and have more funding in groups like the Tea Party?

A white segregationist group that calls itself the Advanced White Society lists its national headquarters as Birmingham, N.J., a woodsy, little-known hamlet on the edge of Pemberton Township.
The Burlington County community had 33 residents, including one African American and one Latino, in 2010, according to a U.S. Census report. It has its own post office and is also home to a chemical plant and a cabinetmaking business. The Fort Dix military base is several miles down the road.
The Advanced White Society is one of five active hate groups in Burlington County, according to the Southern Poverty

Read more at http://www.philly.com/philly/news/new_jersey/20140518_Hate_groups_prompt_push_for_Burlco_commission.html#q2YDRkwO9e8ygBCl.99