Donald and the "sleazy" press.

The Judge who trump labeled a "Mexican" hater  (I think the guy was actually born in Indiana) has ordered the release of the Trump University documents, and the Donald is not pleased.

In fact, he seems to be pretty pissed off these days. When he is not taking on the press for not fawning over him and trying to do real investigative journalism, he is making disparaging and racist remarks about a female senator.

But hey, that's just Donald being Donald. All in a day's work. (Funny, a guy who has gotten millions of dollars in free advertising is now pissed at the press. "Sleazy"?)

What really set Donald off today was the press reporting that after he proudly boasted on national television that he had raised "six million dollars" and given it to the vets, it was revealed that the former draft dodger had not given them a dime.  But then, as the heat got hotter, the Donald decided that it was time to pay the piper.

Most people would have given the money quietly with no fanfare, but not Donald; he called his rather contentious presser today to tell us all that he had given various veterans groups close to the six million dollars that he had promised.  

"At a news conference Tuesday, Trump released a list of 41 groups he said had received $5.6 million.

"Most of the money went out quite a while ago," Trump said. "Some of it went out more recently. But all of this has gone out."

Throughout Tuesday's confrontational event, Trump repeatedly slammed the media as "unbelievably dishonest" for its treatment of the issue and dismissed an ABC reporter as "a sleaze." He said many times that he didn't want credit for the fundraising but seemed peeved that he wasn't thanked for it.
"Instead of being like, 'Thank you very much, Mr. Trump,' or 'Trump did a good job,' everyone's saying, 'Who got it? Who got it? Who got it?' And you make me look very bad," Trump complained, taking on reporters in the room. "I have never received such bad publicity for doing such a good job."

The Associated Press spoke or left messages with each of the organizations Trump named. Of the 30 groups that responded by Tuesday, about half said they had received checks from Trump just last week.

Several said the checks were dated May 24 — the same date as Trump's interview with The Post, and shipped out overnight express.

Among them was the big check from Trump himself, written to the Marine Corps-Law Enforcement Foundation. Trump's campaign had previously told the newspaper that his promised $1 million personal donation had already been distributed.

Though the foundation had received a $100,000 check from Trump's charity in March, last week's $1 million donation came as something of a surprise.

"It is obviously a wonderful donation," said Sue Boulhosa, the group's executive director and sole employee. She said the group had "an inkling" that more might come but the amount was a happy surprise.

Trump has a longstanding relationship with the group, which Boulhosa said typically raises a total of between $2 million and $3 million a year. The foundation had presented Trump with an award at its 2015 gala held at a New York hotel.

Appearing on CNN Tuesday, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said she was glad that Trump had given out the promised money.

"The problem here is the difference between what Donald Trump says and what Donald Trump does," Clinton said. "He's bragged for months about raising $6 million for vets and donating $1 million himself, but it took a reporter to shame him into actually making the contribution."

Trump's campaign manager Corey Lewandowski had originally told the Post that the event had raised about $4.5 million — less than the $6 million originally announced by Trump — because some who'd pledged had backed out. Lewandowski also said all the money had been given out.

Trump had claimed during the fundraiser that he'd raised $6 million through a combination of pledges from wealthy friends, the public and $1 million from himself.

But the campaign refused for months to disclose which charities had received the money, leading to questions about whether the money raised was less than he had said." [Source]

Just Donald being Donald.

*Pic from crooksandliars.com

Harambe and the child.

*You Americans can be so cold at times. I swear that this story about the kid and the gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo has me scratching my head.

Folks are outraged that the gorilla had to be killed to save a kid whose parents, inexplicably, allowed the little crumb- snatcher to fall into the cage with the king of the apes.

I must admit that I have watched the video a few times, and I cannot see where the gorilla was
doing anything more than trying to protect the child in its own crude way.

Now of course I get it, Harambe (the gorilla's name) weighs over 450 pounds, and  he could have taken off the three year old child's hands just by tugging on him. But did the zoo have to kill the poor fella? That is the question that most Americans are asking. And the mother of the child (who is going to recover) now finds herself having to defend herself from all kinds of hateration.  The zoo also finds itself in a position where it has to defend itself for killing Harambe.

"Cincinnati Zoo Director Thane Maynard said he stands by the decision to kill 17-year-old silverback Harambe to save the child. The boy went under a rail, through wires and over a moat wall to get into the enclosure, according to the zoo. Footage shot by a witness shows Harambe dragging the child through the water as the clamor of the crowd grows louder.

Zookeepers shot the 450-pound gorilla with a rifle, rather than tranquilizing him. The brief encounter sparked widespread Internet outrage over the decision to shoot Harambe and whether the child's parents were to blame for failing to look after him.

But those second-guessing the call "don't understand silverback gorillas," Maynard said in a news conference. And, they were not there when it was time to make the crucial decision.

"That child's life was in danger. People who question that don't understand you can't take a risk with a silverback gorilla -- this is a dangerous animal," he said. "Looking back, we'd make the same decision. The child is safe."

All this love and concern for a caged animal that probably shouldn't have been in a cage for the entertainment of humans in the first place.

You can probably tell from the tone of my post that I am not a fan of zoos. 

I just don't think it's cool to capture animals from their natural habitat and stick them somewhere like a zoo so that dumb humans can pay money to play Tarzan King of The Apes.

Aquariums are not cool, either. I am quite sure that whales and dolphins are just as pissed at the thought of having to perform tricks for humans while in captivity. And every now and then they let us humans know just how pissed off they are as well.    

  But back to poor Harambe, whose life came to an end after 17 years because this parent, Michele Gregg, was not paying attention to her child. 

Here is a thought: if you are going to take your child to somewhere like a zoo, you might want to keep your eyes on that little sucker at all times.

"As a society we are quick to judge how a parent could take their eyes off of their child and if anyone knows me I keep a tight watch on my kids,” a woman named Michelle Gregg wrote in a Facebook post reported by People. In the post, which the magazine said has since been deleted, Gregg identified herself as the mother of the toddler.

“Accidents happen but I am thankful that the right people were in the right place today. Thank you to everyone that helped me and my son today and most importantly God for being the awsome (sic) God that He is,” Gregg wrote."

I don't think that you should  be thanking "God" Ms Gregg. Harambe was one of his/her creatures as well.

*Pic from cincinnati.com  

Donald will stop the drought in California, and he compares himself to MLK.

         I know you all want me to stop posting about "the Donald" so much, but sadly, I can't. When  as a blogger you have been given such juicy material by the blogging gods, it's downright un-American to ignore it.

I told you folks that trump winning the republican primary would keep me at my computer, and the orange haired one has not disappointed.

I mean the hits just keep coming.

 "Donald Trump told voters in drought-plagued California on Friday that he had a solution to the water crisis: Open up the water for farmers, because “there is no drought.”

“We’re going to solve your water problem. You have a water problem that is so insane,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee told a crowd filled with farmers in Fresno. “It is so ridiculous where they’re taking the water and shoving it out to sea.”

California is now in its fifth year of drought, which has taken a heavy toll on agriculture in particular. Despite an El Niño event that saw an increase last year in snowpacks that supply about one-third of California’s water, 86 percent of the state is still considered to be in drought.

Trump insinuated that state officials are mismanaging water policy, at the cost of farmers and their crops. Farmers have sharply criticized the state’s irrigation policies, after cuts to water allotments forced them to leave more than a million acres of farmland uncultivated last year.

Water in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta, which flows into the San Francisco Bay and onto the ocean, has been a particularly contentious issue. The delta is a key source of water to cities and farms in California’s fertile Central Valley region. Some farmers there claim politicians are bending to environmental interests and prioritizing the habitat of fish and wetlands over farmland, creating a “man-made drought.....

....“They don’t understand it,” Trump said. “There is no drought, they turn the water out into the ocean.”

He did not go into detail about how officials would open up the water, nor what science supports the claim that the drought is not real. But he did tout himself as a champion of the environment.

“I’ve received many, many environmental rewards, really. Rewards and awards,” Trump said. “I have done very well environmentally. I’m all for it.”

“My environmental standard is very simple, I’ve said it to everybody,” he added. “I want clean water. Clean air, clean water." [Source] 

Vote for Donald and the amount of water you get will be "huuuuge". Just don't ask us how he is going to do it yet.

Then Donald knocked em dead in Washington.

"Donald Trump observed Memorial Day weekend on Sunday by speaking in front of the Lincoln Memorial at a rally of thousands of motorcyclists, where he praised veterans, called reporters “lowlifes,” thanked “the great Bobby Knight” for endorsing him and performed a derisive impression of a general he saw on television.

The presumptive Republican nominee took the occasion — the annual “Rolling Thunder” motorcycle rally, which raises awareness of unaccounted-for POWs and soldiers missing in action — to malign Hillary Clinton and tout his own electoral successes.

Event organizers say the rally draws hundreds of thousands of bikers annually, though police officers on hand for Trump’s address said they were unable to provide an official estimate of either the crowd gathered for the speech or the entire attendance of the weekend-long rally on behalf of veterans, which first took place in 1988 and includes a “First Amendment Demonstration Run” from the Pentagon to the National Mall.

Trump spoke at a stage set up at the end of the reflecting pool closest to the Lincoln Memorial to a relatively sedate crowd of hundreds of bikers and assorted tourists, who did not entirely fill the space between the pool and the memorial. The businessman said it was not the scene he expected to encounter.

“I thought this would be like Dr. Martin Luther King, where the people will be lined up from here all the way to the Washington Monument,” said Trump. King delivered his “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial to a quarter-million supporters in August 1963." [Source]

The guy compares himself to man who wanted to bring the country together, peacefully.

What  a delusional low-life.

Sadly for us all, Dr. King's dream is turning into one long American nightmare. 

*Pic from thegrio.com







  

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: "Bra, you still using Soul Glo?"

*Pic from usatoday.com

OPEN THREAD FRIDAY.

Give me your thoughts about whatever you want.

Although I was wondering, what do you think of trump flip flopping once again and backing out of the debate with Bernie Sanders? (They are calling him #ChickenTrump on twitter.)

Will this hurt or help him in the long run?

"When keeping it real goes wrong."

  I read an interesting post over at Siditty's blog and I thought that  I would share it with you.

If you are a hard working field Negro and you have achieved some success in your life, I believe that you can relate to what she is writing about.

"We all know that in America they way whites obtain success and black people obtain success are two different things. Hard work, nepotism, social class, and white privilege are keys to white success. For black people it is hard work, advanced education, more experience, few or no mistakes in their career, and sheer luck.

Some blacks manage to get ahead. Some do it by assimilating into "mainstream culture", some manage to just work hard and move ahead, but for every black that manages to get ahead, there are others who never seem to make it. Lack of opportunities due to social class, educational opportunities, and the realization that to make it is almost impossible in some instances, keep many from succeeding.

When you do succeed, you still fail, because for all your hard work, and your ability to make it, there is going to be some who didn't make it who feel you turned your back on them. Black people are the only race of people who expect a person to become successful to "keep it real". The problem is that sometimes "keeping it real" goes wrong.

You can't expect someone to leave the ghetto to go to school, and then come back to the same damn ghetto and succeed. If you surrounded yourself with people in high school whose ambition in life it was to sling dope on the streets, you can't go back to that and do well. If your neighborhood was filled with men who hang out in front of the liquor store all day, you can't come back to that and do well. St. Ides is not going to help keep your brain cells in tact. So you can't kick it with the boys who drink St. Ides all day long. The only thing you can do is help those who don't do that. You can show a high school student the steps needed to take to get into college or vocational school, because their school won't or their parents just don't know. You can tell a elementary and middle school students the importance of an education, and what to do and where to go if they are struggling, or their parents can't or won't help them. You can tell some of those liquor store men about Job Corps and how to apply. You can tell families about resources available to them to help them get their loved one out of in front of the liquor store, but you cannot save everyone. You can only save those who want to be saved. To succeed, you cannot surround yourself with failure and negativity on a constant basis.

I hate to say this, but in this country we can't be exactly like white people and isolate ourselves into our own community. We need those white corporations, companies, and employers to get ahead until we can start our own businesses. I am not an advocate of isolation, but I do understand that in order to rebuild black communities, we need to look at forming successful black businesses, and right now we need to model ourselves after the traditional business model, and the only way to do that is to work for those companies, learn how they work, and then bring that back to the community. So yeah, we are going to have to "sell out" and go work for the white man so we can learn.

Another thing that irks me is if white people like a black person, that black person is automatically an Uncle Tom. Oprah can't help that white women love her. They like her because she doesn't seem like a threat. I think Oprah knows this, and she is knowing it all the way to the bank. One thing I will say is that Oprah sticks to her guns. She decided a long time ago she wasn't going to continue with the tabloid spin of her talk show when she first came out. Remember Oprah was the momma of the talk shows as we know them today, even Jerry Springer. Oprah used to be on par with the other talk shows. She used to have the KKK on her show spouting "white power". She had the black militants on her show as well. Did she let them duke it out on her show, let's keep it real, she still had some standards, but needless to say, she kept it a little trashy to keep up ratings. She hasn't had to go Jerry to keep her viewers, and the white woman loved has only recently waned, but think about it, we are 20 something years of the same show. She doesn't do a show to necessarily to appease them, if that was the case she would have had Sarah Palin on her show, instead she does shows that interest her, and let's face it over 20 years and several billions dollars more in worth, her interests have changed. I don't think Oprah has become a mammy to white woman, she is now showing her elevation in class, and sometimes she is out of touch. If I were a billionaire, I would dare say I might be a clad out of touch with the reality of the middle class on occasion as well. She has mammified the white women who love her, not become a mammy to them.

Living in the suburbs, the way you talk, managing to get out of a low income area, or never living in a low income area, becoming successful, and having white friends does not make you a sell out. What makes you a sell out is the mentality of thinking that you are somehow better than another person because you got lucky. Yes some people live in the ghetto because they are lazy, but take into consideration many or most aren't, and those that are lazy are dealing with generations of a mentality and surroundings that give them a sense of hopelessness. If you lose touch with humanity, that makes you a sell out.
Ultimately to become a success as a black person is almost a curse because you never ever truly fit in with your white co-workers and neighbors (they never forget about your blackness, and when they do, they actually notice it) and you don't fit in with the "down" black folk. You are on your own, hoping for the best. " [Source] 

Well of course "keeping it real" does not have to mean keeping it stupid.

You should work hard and aspire for all the finer things in life, but you should never lose sight of who you are in the world and what it took for you to get where you are.

Thoughts?

*Pic from youtube.com.


  

The Willie Lynch playbook.

         I don't care if there was an actual Willie Lynch letter, I believe that the basic premise of the so called letter is true: That you can better control blacks by dividing them.

Here is how one writer from the island of St. Vincent describes how the Willie Lynch control over black folks works.

 "The gruesome period of slavery was stained with the blood, sweat, and the tears of the Negro race. I speak of the period of African slavery. During this time of history, Western owners of African slaves saw an escalation of slave insurrection which was becoming a common problem; as a result, the slave owners were using stringent measures to gain a handle on the situation; measures that made the slaves less productive, such as amputation of body parts or death. These measures were designed to discourage the dangerous and costly occurrences, such as revolts, sabotage, etc.

This was a dark period in black history and this era saw the rise of a slave owner whose personification was constructed of pure hate for the black race and an uncanny desire to protect and maximize the profitability of his investment (slave and the other benefits of owning a plantation). This man was William Lynch but he is better known as Willie Lynch. In desperation for a solution, the slave owner Willie Lynch stumbled upon a solution. This plan was instrumental in dismantling the unity and common goal of freedom that lent cohesiveness and secrecy to the plans and execution of the actions of rebellion and sabotage by the enslaved blacks.

Lynch went about sowing the seeds of distrust and betrayal as he created an atmosphere of disunity among the enslaved. He took advantage of every difference he found among the community and he used them to his benefit but to the African captives’ detriment. Lynch used simple and insignificant differences to divide the community; he put the tall negro against the short negro, the light skinned negro against the dark skinned negro, the negro who worked in the house against the negro that worked in the field; the male against the female; as a result, total chaos ensued on the plantations among the Africans.

The masters developed new method of punishment to complement the brutal order that was prevalent. Therefore, acts of disloyalty were not only punished with amputations, castration, death, etc. that was common; but other subtle means of punishment were implemented. The enslaved that were considered disloyal to their masters and his management system were also punished with demotion, they were sold to plantations that were more cruel than the one on which they lived, while the slaves who betrayed the movement to gain freedom and better treatment were rewarded with a promotion.

As a result, this system saw field slaves who betrayed the cause of freedom given cushy assignments in the master’s house; these slaves were not willing to trade their new life of ease for anything; while the enslaved that worked in the house or in some other position of ease, who were believed to have been disloyal to their masters but loyal to the cause of freedom, were banished to the agonizing toil and maltreatment of the field, they were separated from their family or sold to plantations with a greater level of cruelty.
Because of the total lack of trust that became prevalent within the Negro community, the black captives lost sight of the big picture of freedom, a right they once had and wanted again; if not for themselves but for their children. Unfortunately, the state of disunity and betrayal that existed in the community was instrumental in changing the objective into one that saw the enslaved community becoming preoccupied with attaining a life of ease for themselves rather than freedom they once held dear. As a result of the prevalence of betrayal that existed, It became dangerous even to be seen consulting together, for to be so seen was an opportunity for some desperate slave to fabricate a story to attain for him or herself a life of ease.

When Willie Lynch saw the effectiveness of sowing seeds of division, divisiveness and betrayal among the enslaved and the fruitfulness such had, he became the champion of the control of the enslaved race; as a result, during 1712, William Lynch went on a tour of the Caribbean, North America, Central America and Europe, teaching the art of that which worked well for him. " [Source]

Whether you believe the stories about Willie Lynch or not, what you can't deny is that there are a lot of Willie Lynch type tactics being used against people of color today.

J Edger Hoover used it during the peak of the civil rights struggle, various police departments across the country used it against the Black Panther party, and fast forward to modern times where we can see conservative media outlets like FOX VIEWS using it effectively as well. "See our Negroes (ahem ahem, Charles Payne; Harris Faulkner) they are not like you other Negroes.". 

And let's not forget Donald trump. The man who wants to use Willie Lynch style tactics to punch his ticket into the White House.

"In this election, Donald Trump has used a grieving black father’s loss to try to pit black voters against Mexican immigrants. He employs black spokespeople to tell black voters that immigrants are taking their jobs. He tweets false crime statistics as a ploy to get black people to talk about “black-on-black” crime and distract from the hate crimes at his rallies.

He deploys female supporters to undermine other women on TV by criticizing—of all things—their breast size. When a reporter grilled him on his treatment of women, he rallied women to viciously attack that woman.

Then, when his campaign manager manhandled a reporter, Trump 1) sent women out as “grab-gate truthers” to insist it never happened, and 2) dispatched women to—predictably—blame the victim and insinuate that she deserved it.
 

Mr. “I’ll be the best thing that ever happened to women” (yes, he actually said that) is fond of employing rape metaphors in service of his xenophobia (re: China). All the while, he openly cavorts with actual, convicted rapists. So obsessed with rape as idiom, he’s unconcerned with rape as fact.

this election, this career beauty pageant owner will facilitate women slut-shaming, fat-shaming and all-around body-shaming one another. That’s made easier in a year when “There are probably more ugly women in America than attractive women” comes from the mouth of even a Hillary Clinton surrogate.

The Queens, N.Y., native, who won the majority of his state’s Hispanic primary voters last month, will appeal to chasms among Hispanics: of income, citizenship status, national origin and exiles vs. immigrants (“Nothing against immigrants, but my parents were exiles. And the exile experience is different than the immigrant experience,” Marco Rubio has said). Trump will employ a strategy, as candidly described by one senator, “to divide and conquer the people ... on assistance,” to get them “to look down at” each other.

This is how Trump—a man who wants to ban Muslims from the country—got the leader of the Nation of Islam to say about him, “I like what I'm looking at,” on the strength of Trump’s giving the most anti-Semitic speech of any presidential candidate since David Duke (who, not coincidentally, has endorsed Trump).
 

That’s the 2016 presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s path to victory: getting enough people like Louis Farrakhan to make common cause with people like David Duke. If that sounds preposterous, consider that the Nation of Islam and Nazis have famously played footsie together before.

Trump knows all of this.

He also knows that history is replete with minority groups used as foils—Chinese and Mexican immigrants as strikebreakers on the railroads, and black workers as a “labor reserve” in the North, having fled the Jim Crow South, where black people served as the original cheap labor: free. "[More]

Somebody has been doing his homework. Now let's see if you Negroes have been doing yours.

*Pic from npr.org.

 

 

The strange world of Clarence Thomas.

The Field Negro education series continues.

What would make a man hate himself more than anyone-- or anything---around him? And how does such a person even live with himself?

I am talking about Clarence Thomas. The man who put the house in house Negro.

Ofari Hutchinson might have an answer for the first part of my semi-rhetorical question.

"There was an especially telling moment in Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s brief Q and A with C-Span in April, 2013. The question was what he thought about President Obama. Thomas first gave a pithy put-down of Obama and then admitted that he had practically no interaction with him. But then he sternly said that he, Thomas, was a black man who did not say the “prescribed things” and that he’d be “picked apart” for it.

He has been and he’s done everything humanly and legally possible to get his revenge for being picked at. The latest in the long trail of Thomas paybacks was his sole dissenting vote against scrapping the death penalty verdict for Timothy Tyrone Foster, an African-American, in a rape and murder case in Georgia. Georgia prosecutors were outrageously blatant in dumping any African-American from the jury in the case. They went so far as to put racial designations—“B#1, B#2, and B#3”—beside the prospective black juror’s names and then summarily booting them.
 

This was too much stomach for Justice John Roberts, and the other two staunch conservatives on the bench. They quickly tossed the verdict, reminding Georgia and all that picking juries by race is a firmly established legal and constitutional no-no. But not Thomas, he didn’t see or hear any evil in the patently illegal shenanigans of Georgia prosecutors.
 

So one can say what they want about Thomas but with his latest judicial insult, he’s been a man of his word. Since that fateful day in 1991 when a deeply divided and even more deeply reluctant Senate confirmed him to the high court, Thomas vowed payback against those who ridiculed, reviled, and hounded him during the confirmation fight, and have relentlessly lambasted him since then. He’s been on an unholy crusade to wreak revenge for that humiliation. When the issue is anything that even faintly smacks of race, be it voting rights, housing or job discrimination, and his favorite, crime and punishment, especially the death penalty, and the aggrieved is an African-American, Thomas never disappoints. He will vote to burn him.
 

Thomas’s latest ridiculous dissenting vote, like his other just as ridiculous lone wolf votes on race based court cases, make absolutely no sense to most legal experts. But they’re not about law. His decisions make sense because they have less to do with his warped interpretation of law and its practice than with his publicly expressed racial views, and his private vow to get revenge.
 

When asked some years ago how long he’d stay on the court, he reportedly said that he’d stay there for next 43 years of his life. He was 43 at the time. In a more revealing aside, he supposedly quipped to friends that it would take him that long to get even. Whether that is hyperbole or an apocryphal tale, it hasn’t taken him 43 years to wreak his revenge.
 

The dissent in the Foster case is more than ample proof that Thomas has been a one man wrecking crew on race in law and public policy decisions. But this is not simply one man’s personal bitterness over his alleged mistreatment by liberals and civil rights leaders. Nor is it a case of his digging in his heels to push his retrograde view on racial matters. He wants more judges to think and act like him on the bench. And all the better if those strict racial constructionist judges happen to be minorities.

In his 2007 autobiography, My Grandfather’s Son, the bitter grudge that he holds against those who did so much to dump his confirmation were on naked and brutal display. He showed no sign of budging a step from the never-ending public and private war he’s waged against civil rights leaders and liberal Democrats. He branded them the “liberal mob” and gripped that they had one goal, and only one goal, and that is to “keep the black man in his place.” The black man of course is Thomas.

The other theme that courses through Thomas’s clinical need for payback is his obsessive view of himself as the perennial martyr. In an American Enterprise Institute lecture in 2001, he wrapped himself in the martyr’s garment and said that he expected to be treated badly for challenging liberal opinion. A decade later in a talk to the ultra-conservative Federalist Society, he vented that persecution complex again when he said that unnamed critics “seem bent on undermining” the Supreme Court. He meant one justice on the court, himself.
 

Thomas’s mean-spirited and vindictive views and legal opinions on the death penalty, age and gender bias, first amendment, prisoner rights and affirmative action cases were well known by the time he hit the court in 1991. It could hardly be said even then that he latched on to judicial conservatism solely to curry favor with white conservatives to snatch a seat on the high court. He actually believes what he says and writes in his nutty on man dissents even when others ridicule him mercilessly and deservedly for them. And he could care less, it’s just Thomas continuing his big payback." [Source]

 "Sold me out, for chump change (yes you did!!)
Told me that they, they had it all arranged
You handed me down, and that's a fact
Now you're pumped, You gotta get ready For the big payback!!" ~James Brown~


Clarence sold out alright, but I can guarantee you that it wasn't for "chump change".


*Pic from Wikipedia

Racism on a train, and Airbnb has a problem.

There are a couple of stories in the news that inspired my post this evening.

They are stories of men of color being slighted and embarrassed because of their race, and then finding themselves having to what I call race shame the perpetrators.

The first one allegedly took place on a  train.

Now let's be honest, these incidents happen all the time, but we are so used to them and other day to day slights and indignities that might go unnoticed, that we don't even sweat them when they do happen.
 
"Former Washington Wizards player Etan Thomas was denied an empty seat on a train that was later given to a white man. So he took to Facebook Friday with his story, and the post went viral: It's been shared more than 29,000 times.

The NBA baller reported that he was looking for a seat on a full train when he asked a woman if the empty seat next to her was available. She responded that someone was already sitting there. What happens next, according to Thomas, is why he took her photo and posted it to his social media accounts.

Per Thomas:

"Now, less than 2 mins later a man (who happens to be white) asks if he can sit there and she says why sure let me move my stuff. So I have to say something so I ask ummmmm did you just not want ME to sit next to you ? Were you scared ? Not comfortable with a Black Man sitting next to you ?"

The woman reportedly told the retired Wizards player not to "pull the race card stuff" with her because she dated a black man in college. [Source]

The following is from his facebook page:

"Ok so I'm getting on the train and there are no open seats and I ask this lady if I could sit next to her (very politely and I soften my voice as to not frighten her) and she says someone is sitting here. So I go to the next seat. Now, less than 2 mins later a man (who happens to be white) asks if he can sit there and she says why sure let me move my stuff. So I have to say something so I ask ummmmm did you just not want ME to sit next to you ? Were you scared ? Not comfortable with a Black Man sitting next to you ? And she says lol smh don't pull the race card stuff with me I dated a Black guy in college. So the guy (who was a nice guy) said listen I'll get up and I said no need I'mma just take this pic and make a Facebook post about it. So then she says did you just take a pic of me ? Well I'm going to tell the conductor that you're over here illegally taking pics of ppl without their consent. So the conductor came up and said hey Etan Thomas love what you're doing in the community loved you with the Wizards big Cuse fan man the Knicks sure could use you .... And I said was there something you wanted to tell my man ? And she rolled her eyes smh some ppl I tell ya"

Oh my! A racist can't even be a racist in peace anymore without you Negroes shaming her on social media. I remember the good old days when you would have to suffer these day to say racist interactions with folks from the majority population in silence. Now social media gives you a chance to vent and share your anger and your pain.

The guy even put on his "can't frighten whitey" voice for crying out loud. Maybe it was the dreads that scared her.

Still, good for Etan Thomas for exposing "Missy". I don't think that she would have been worth my time and energy. I suppose if I was in his space I would have been a little angry, but unlike him I would have expected it.

The other case of a black man getting slapped with a dose of racism is a bit more serious because it involved a corporation and commerce.

First, let me say this: whenever I go to another city or country I never even consider using Airbnb. Just something about staying in a stranger's house doesn't sit right with me. I don't care how nice or quaint the place is.

I remember when the Pope came to Philly and Mrs. Field was throwing around the idea of renting out chez Field for a week or so. "Honey, the money would be great, and we could just take a vacation during that time." Yeah right. Needless to say, that did not happen.

Which leads me to poor Gregory Selden. All the guy wanted was to find a nice spot in Philly to cool his heels for awhile, and he thought that he could take advantage of a service which folks in the majority population take advantage of with no problem.

"A man looking for a place to stay in Philadelphia is now suing Airbnb claiming the house-sharing website facilitated racial discrimination against him.

In March 2015, 25-year-old Virginia resident Gregory Selden, who is black, wanted a place to stay in Philadelphia but was rejected by an Airbnb host, according to Jezebel. That same host, though, accepted requests from two fake profiles depicting white men that Selden set up after his rejection.

Although the individual was renting a private home – people would say, 'Can't you do whatever you want with your private home?' ­– the fact is that he opened it up to the public," legal analyst Steve Benjamin said to Richmond, Virginia’s NBC12. "And the law is, once you do that, you're not allowed to discriminate."

Selden’s lawsuit, beginning with a complaint filed this past Tuesday in Washington, D.C., accused Airbnb of denying him "full and equal enjoyment" of its services based on his race, CNN Money reported. His suit seeks class action status as other similar stories have been reported on social media with the hashtag #AirbnbWhileBlack.

"We recognize that bias and discrimination present significant challenges, and we are taking steps to address them,” an Airbnb statement was quoted by NBC12. “Profile photos are an important part of our community and are one of the many tools that help hosts and guests connect with one another.”

Earlier this week, Airbnb sent Selden an email asking to arrange a phone conversation with him, NBC12 added, also stating that after his Airbnb ordeal, Selden instead booked a hotel room in Philadelphia." [Source]

Young man, may I suggest the Marriott at 12th and Market?

Or, next time post a picture of your white friend, and do a switcheroo on your "color aroused" white host. Problem solved.  


*Pic from bleacherreport.com

     

"Trumpania" and the politics of race.

The Field Negro education series continues.

Tonight I post an excellent essay from my friend, Chauncey Devega.

(Check out his terrific  blog, here when you get a chance.)

"The sociological imagination is the connection between personal experience and the broader social and political world. This concept is one of the most powerful frameworks for understanding the human experience and how we locate it within a given society and/or cultural milieu.

As such, the sociological imagination has been invaluable in my efforts to make sense of politics in the Age of Obama, the rise of “Trumpmania,” and the radical rightward move of the Republican Party and movement conservatism. Because such interactions are both disturbing and fascinating, I routinely take “human safaris” to overt white supremacist websites and the comment sections of Fox News and similar right-wing entertainment disinformation media. I also respond to conservatives via social media who are made enraged, hurt, and angry by the topics and themes explored by my essays and other work.

While the right-wing media exists in a state of epistemic closure—where the logic, reasoning, and rationales of the troglodytes stuck within are bizarre and exist outside of empirical reality—it remains essential that we pull back the veil and look inside: The machinations that are produced therein are a threat to the Common Good.

One of the repeated narratives which I have encountered from Donald Trump supporters online (and in person) is that they are not “racists,” are the “real victims” of “political correctness,” and how there is no “evidence” or “proof” that the ascendance of Donald Trump’s pro-fascist, right-wing producerist, Herrenvolk movement is driven by racial animus or bigotry.

Much of these responses—beyond trolling, deflection, and evasion—are standard right-wing talking points for the post-civil rights era and the Age of Obama. An unwarranted sense of victimhood as well as grievance mongering is a perpetual state of affairs for conservatives, from the civil rights era to the present.

Other Trump supporters and Republicans are befuddled by the claim that their party’s present state and its presumed nominee are the result of decades of the “Southern Strategy” and the politics of white racial resentment. Some of them are ignorant of their own political party’s history and present. Others lack critical thinking skills, and a good many are propagandized by the right-wing disinformation machine. Systems-level thinking is a skill conservatives find very challenging, and the majority are simply exhibiting the binary thinking, fear-dominated heuristics and cognition, as well as authoritarian tendencies that are common to their brain structures and political personalities.

Ultimately, in my conversations with Donald Trump supporters (and conservatives too), I often arrive where the journey began. Racism is not an opinion. It is a fact. The power of the color line and how it influences almost every dimension of American (and global) social and political life is not an “unknown unknown.” The fact that historically, white supremacy and white privilege overdetermine the positive life outcomes and life chances of white folks relative to black and brown people is one of the most consistent and repeated findings in all of the social sciences.

New work by Jason McDaniel and Sean McElwee examines the relationship between white animus and support for Donald Trump. Their findings are one more data point in a long and well-documented story about the relationship between racism and conservatism.

Writing at Salon, they have examined the preliminary findings of the 2016 American National Election Studies. McDaniel and McElwee came to the following conclusion:

Research suggests that right-wing views are strongly correlated with negative feelings towards groups considered as “others.” Trump clearly draws on these attitudes: his supporters have negative feelings towards most of the groups we examined, with the exception of the police and whites. We also find that white identity leads Trump supporters to have more negative feelings about Latinos and Muslims, and this effect isn’t true among whites who support other Republican candidates…As Marc Hetherington and Drew Engelhardt have shown, the parties have increasingly polarized across racial lines (with more racially conservative whites joining the Republicans, and racially sympathetic whites joining in the Democrats). This is due to an intentional strategy on the right to manipulate racial animus for political gains.

McDaniel and McElwee also show that:

The Trump phenomenon may be the last gasp of the old world order, in which white men ruled and anyone who didn’t conform would be ostracized. Trump supporters appear to resemble the supporters of Wallace and Nixon, with their support for the police and whites, and their disdain for those who don’t conform to the “Silent Majority.” The work above suggests that Trump supporters might be motivated less by positive feelings about Trump and more by negative feelings about groups they dislike that are motivated by the perception of threats to their identity as white people in America. If Trump stands for anything, it is the restoration of his supporters threatened racial identity by standing against gays, lesbians and other groups his supporters dislike.

Racism, nativism, authoritarianism, white racial identity, and grievance mongering are central to support for Donald Trump:

The results are pretty clear: compared to supporters of other Republican candidates in the primary, Trump supporters really dislike many groups in America. For these voters, Trump’s blend of casual racism and muscular nativism is the core of his appeal.

Again. Racism is not an opinion.

As they have done with other research about the relationship between white racial animus, overt racism, Donald Trump, and conservatism, the Trump supporters I shared this work with online were incredulous. Of course, they believe that there is a “conspiracy” by “liberal professors” to “make people like them look bad.” But this defensiveness and rage also show both the progress that has been made along the color line, and how much work remains to be done.

Racism and white supremacy are now civic sins to be publicly shamed by polite society. This is a type of forward movement. Of course, the election of Barack Obama—twice—was monumental, even while he also actively avoided creating specific and targeted programs to help ameliorate the damage caused to African Americans by institutional as well as interpersonal white racism.

Many white Americans actually believe that they are victims of “racism.” This fallacy is a sign of a profound disconnect between the world as it is compared to the one conjured up by the White Gaze. It also signals a feeling that white privilege and white majority group status are imperiled because of the “browning of America.” First: In the United States the categories of “whiteness” and who is considered “white” have always expanded to include new members. There is no reason to believe that such a centuries-long process will somehow suddenly stop. Second, even allowing for exaggerated readings of America’s changing demographics, “white” people will still be the single largest group, as well as control a vast and overwhelming amount of the country’s wealth, income, and other resources for the foreseeable future.

Forward-thinking and progressive-minded people also have much work to do in educating white Americans (and some others) that racism is not just the extreme of Neo Nazis, Kluxers, or other white bigots. Rather, it is a system of social, economic, and political practices that white folks benefit from—whether they intend to or not. Racism need not be conscious and intentional to cause great harm. In fact, some of the most dangerous types of racist and white supremacist practices are committed on a subconscious level and in a quotidian way because said behavior(s) is just “normal” or a “habit”… one that remains unchallenged or critically reflected upon.

As I have written here and elsewhere, support for Donald Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign is not a buffet. His racism, nativism, and bigotry are not coincidental to his supposed platform of rebuilding the United States’ infrastructure or economic protectionism: White identity politics are central to his political strategy and appeal.

The mainstream corporate news media dances around and evades speaking plainly and truthfully about this fact. Instead, Trump’s people are given euphemisms such as “angry” or “white working class” voters who feel “abandoned” by “elites” and “the system.” This may very well be true. These voters are also part of a racist, nativist, and bigoted political movement that even by the horribly low bar set by the Republican Party on these matters is quite noxious and dangerous to the health of the American body politic.

It’s important to use appropriate and accurate language to describe Donald Trump’s supporters and the political cult leader himself.

These people are Trump-thug-licans.

Donald Trump has bathed, in a manner akin to that of Elizabeth Bathory, in the metaphorical blood of racism, white supremacy, nativism, and bigotry to become the GOP’s presumptive 2016 presidential nominee.

As anti-racism activist and humanitarian freedom fighter Jane Elliot has said, “Racism is not pretty or nice. It is ugly.” Like her, I do not talk gently or in a way that is overly concerned with white folks’ feelings—be they Trump supporters or not—about the reality of the color line in America and the world.

“Trumpmania” is a racist, white supremacist movement. The so-called “liberal” news media should stop pretending otherwise." [Source]