Demonizing a movement.

"  If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

~Desmond Tutu~

The debate is so silly. "Why do they say that only black lives matter? Don't all lives matter?"

Let's think about that for a minute. The name of the movement is not only black lives matter, or, white lives don't matter. It's not even something as intimidating to hear as say, Black Panthers, or Black Power. The name itself is tame: Black Lives Matter. All of us who identify with the movement in one way or another are still scratching our heads over the majority population's issue with what it represents.

To listen to people like Sarah Palin and other right- wing zealots, you would think that the black lives matter movement is right up there with Isis as a group that should be feared in this country.

It's why I am not sure of what to make of some of the platitudes coming from politicians in Washington. There is a disingenuous nature to all of it. Let's just strike the right tone. Even though deep down we feel just like Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly.

I listened to Charles Blow on CNN last night, and he made an excellent point to Don Lemon, who was doing his usual best to make his white listeners feel comfortable.

I am paraphrasing, but he said something to the effect that he should not be apologizing for his blackness, and the burden shouldn't be on him to have to teach folks in the majority not to be racist. He argued that he is the one being victimized. Why should the one doing the victimizing, he wanted to know, get a pass?

He is right. The debate about racism and injustice in this country has always been about blaming the oppressed. If you call out racism, you are the racist. If you see injustice and speak on it, you are rocking the boat. "Can't we all just get along?" 

We could. But the charlatans and hucksters who are profiting from making poor and marginalized white people believe that  black people are the root of all of their problems would never stand for it.

On a personal note I need folks to understand something: If we never come together as a country it will not effect my life one bit.

It won't make my home or wife any less beautiful; it won't take a dollar out of my bank account; and it wont raise my golf score or improve my second serve or the quality of my backhand in tennis. I will continue to enjoy the life I have now, and the memories of a wonderful life that I have lived to this point. 

This debate is about the people (black and white) who have been marginalized in this country, and the systematic and institutionalized racism that keeps tearing our country apart by denying people at the bottom of the social and economic ladder real opportunities.

To blame this on the black lives matter movement is just silly and wrong. It strikes me as people who need to look at themselves and their own short-comings, trying to find an excuse for something that they have failed to do.    

This struggle for social justice and equal rights is not about black versus white; it's about the survival of this country. The sooner we all realize that and stop trying to blame or situation on a movement formed around a hashtag, the better off we will be.

*Pic from wikipedia.org

"America is my country and Paris is my hometown."

I am quite sure that Gertrude Stein wasn't referring to Paris, Texas when she said those words.

There is plenty to see and do in Paris, France. The Ave Des Champs Elyses; The Louvre; a wine bar in the Entrants Rouge Market; the Le Marais District, I could go on and on. Paris, Texas, on the other hand, not so much. Unless you consider pick up truck, Negro dragging , something to do.

I know they have a Main Street, and apparently they have a farmer's market as well. (That's always nice) And, they have their very own civic center, named: (Get this) The Love Civic Center. Yep, I kid you not. THE LOVE CIVIC CENTER!

Maybe it's because they don't have much to do in Paris, Texas why black folks and white folks have been at each other's throats so much. Now, of course, this was before the beerfest and our teachable moment in A-merry-ca, so this post is probably obsolete. Right now as I type this post, some of those very folks who were screaming at each other across the side walk in the hot Texas heat, could be sipping ice tea and eating watermelon slices together while they watch Hee Haw reruns.

Just a couple of weeks ago the Panthers and the KKK were squaring off in the the republic of Texas in open defiance of the O man's post racial A-merry-ca. Thank god Skip Gates and Sgt. Crow[ley] came along. They were just in time to bring us all together.

Still, I can't only rip the people of Paris, Texas. Hell they have lots of things to do around here and in Boston and look how the racial harmony thing has been working out for us. Of course we didn't have any of our Negroes dragged to death like they did in Jasper and Paris, because that has not been designated a sport here yet. Not yet. We are still pretty much into our Eagles and Phillies, and I am sure the folks up in Boston love their Red Sox and Patriots as well. Of course, that could change. Maybe we just need folks up here to buy more pick up trucks.

Voting Rights from a wingnut's perspective.

I tried to watch the BET Awards tonight, but after seeing T-Pain's dumb ass go on stage with what was literally a "big ass chain" (yes, a big ass chain that said "big ass chain" on it) I just couldn't watch anymore. I decided to come and do some work and blog, instead. I will let you all tell me about it. That is, of course, if you are still watching and didn't decide to turn it off like moi.

Anyway, tonight I want to talk about a fellow member of the Pennsylvania Bar, Christine Flowers, who wrote an article comparing our rights to vote in this country with what has been happening in Iran. She started off alright when she said the following:

'WHERE is my vote?" screamed the protesters in the streets of Tehran. Bloodied opponents of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made their disenfranchisement public and demanded that the world pay attention. And we did, using the magic of the Internet, logging on to Twitter and YouTube, and sharing, in real time, the agony of the Iranian people. We watched, horrified, as one young woman was murdered by government thugs and we witnessed the beatings of countless others.

Votes are precious currency. We pay for democracy with each ballot, each inked finger, each raised hand. The right to self-government isn't free - it's purchased from citizens at a sometimes monumental price. And when those votes are stolen in any way, tyranny takes root. That appears to be what happened in Iran. And it's also what happened in this country at times in our history when huge swaths of our citizens were denied a voice in governance.

It was the days of Jim Crow and gerrymandering, when voting districts in the South were structured so that the black vote was watered down or, in the worst cases, eliminated altogether. A time when men in white sheets did their dirty deeds with ropes and crosses at midnight.

Eventually, we found a way to dismantle the hateful oligarchy of the racists. It was called the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and gave the federal government unprecedented power to oversee local elections to ensure that every citizen of the Deep South, especially those once counted as three-fifths of humanity, could cast their ballots.

It worked. And it deserves to be recognized as one of the pillars of evolving social justice, along with the Emancipation Proclamation, the 13th Amendment, the Civil Rights Act and Brown v. Board of Education. But this doesn't mean that, 40-plus years after the fact, it can't be revisited to see if perhaps some of its provisions are dated and no longer relevant. Of course, don't tell that to the New York Times editorial board, the American Civil Liberties Union and many other groups for whom the mere notion that you could even think of revisiting the VRA is heretical.

And it's exactly why they trembled when the Supreme Court agreed to hear a challenge to Section 5 of the act, thinking that the conservative justices would be able to overturn four decades of progress with a stroke of their mean-spirited pens.

Surprise! It didn't happen."

Okay Christine, so it didn't happen, (no thanks to Clarence) but you shouldn't be gloating because the fact that you folks on the right think that Section 5 of the act should even be revisited at this particular time in our history, just goes to show how out of touch you really are.

Anyway, I said Christine's article started off okay, but then it ended like this:

"...Back in 1967, my father spent a summer in Mississippi registering black candidates for office and black citizens for the vote.

He came back with stories of little children using the "n-word" and "Yankee lawyers" dodging spit - and worse. He wrote in his diary that "It made me feel very ill to know that there were people in America who differed very little in my judgment from those who manned Auschwitz in 1944."

And that's why, 40 years ago, that law was a godsend. But as Chief Justice Roberts noted in his majority opinion, today "minority candidates hold office at unprecedented levels." He also observed that when Congress renewed the act in 2006, it relied on data more than three decades old. Talk about back to the future.

You'd think we could sensibly judge for ourselves whether in 2009, with a black president sitting in the Oval Office after a serene and glitch-free election - and a black woman being one of the richest and most influential figures in the country - the Voting Rights Act could withstand a sensible critique - especially in utility-district voting in Texas.
YOU'D also think that, given what's happening in Iran, we could look at ourselves honestly and say, our votes, once threatened, are now safe. At the very least, if we want to maintain the fiction that black voters are still denied their full rights at the ballot box, we could also acknowledge that white voters who are intimidated by Black Panther thugs at Philadelphia polling places should get the same federal protection.

But when the Justice Department shelves the prosecution of those thugs, you have your answer. I guess the times are indeed a-changin' - in some unexpectedly interesting ways."

"Our votes...are now safe"? Christine, of course, makes the classic mistake that so many whites make when the view the achievement of black folks as a collective: They cherry pick the few of us who have achieved to extraordinary levels in this country, in spite of racism.

And finally, she ends her article by telling a flat out lie. Those "Black Panther thugs" intimidated no one, and they were at very few polling places on election day in November of 2008 here in Philadelphia.

So what started out as a decent article which seemed like, for once, the issue of race was going to be given fair treatment by a wingnut, pretty much turned out how I suspected it would: Wrong.

I am sorry you didn't surprise me, Christine. But I am sure you are not.

Article here.

Goodbye "white guilt".

"There go my fellow conservatives, glumly shuffling along, depressed by the election aftermath. Not me. I'm virtually euphoric. Don't get me wrong. I'm not thrilled with America's flirtation with neosocialism. But there's a massive silver lining in the magical clouds that lofted Barack Obama to the presidency. For today, without a shred of intellectually legitimate opposition, I can loudly proclaim to America:

The Era of White Guilt is over.

This seemingly impossible event occurred because the vast majority of white Americans didn't give a fluff about skin color and enthusiastically pulled the voting lever for a black man. Not just any black man. A very liberal black man who spent his early career race-hustling banks, praying in a racist church for 20 years, and actively working with America-hating domestic terrorists. Yet white Americans made Barack Obama their leader. Therefore, as of Nov. 4, 2008, white guilt is dead.

So today, I'm feeling a little 'uppity,' if you will. For more than a century, the millstone of white guilt hung around our necks, retribution for slave-owning predecessors. In the 1960s, American liberals began yanking that millstone while sticking a fork in the eye of black Americans, exacerbating the racial divide to extort a socialist solution to the country's problems. But if a black man can become president, exactly what significant barrier is left? The election of Barack Obama destroys the validation of liberal white guilt. The dragon is hereby slain.

So today, I'm feeling a little "uppity," if you will. From this day forward, my tolerance level for having my skin color hustled is exactly ZERO. No more Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "God Damn America," Al Sharpton's Church of Perpetual Victimization, or Jesse Jackson's rainbow racism. Cornel West? You're a fraud. All those 'black studies' programs must now teach kids to thank Whitey. And I want that on the final.

Congressional Black Caucus? Irrelevant. U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters (D., Calif.)? Shut up. ACORN? Outlawed. Black Panthers? Go home and pet your kitty. Black separatists? Find another nation that offers better dreams. To those Eurosnots who forged careers hating America? I'm still waiting for the first black French president.
No more quotas. No more handouts. No more complaining that 'the man' is keeping you down. 'The man' is now black.

It's time to toss that massive, obsolete race-hustle machine upon the heap of the other stupid '60s ideas. Drag it over there, right between free love and cop-killing. Careful, don't trip on streaking. Just dump it. And then wash your hands. It's filthy. Obama's ascension also creates another gargantuan irony. How can liberals sell American racism, class envy and unfairness when our new black president and his wife went to Ivy League schools, got high-paying jobs, became millionaires, bought a mansion, and are now moving to the White House? How unfair is that? Now, like a delicious O. Henry tale, Obama's spread-the-wealth campaign rendered itself moot by its own victory! America is officially a meritocracy. Obama's election has validated American conservatism.

So ... Wham!!! That's the sound of my foot kicking the door shut on the era of white guilt. The rites have been muttered, the carcass lowered, dirt shoveled, and tombstone erected. Dead and buried."

That brilliant proclamation was from a conservative hack by the name of Tom Adkins, writing in my hometown paper, The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Interesting; so it was "white guilt" and not a heart felt belief in the credos of our fine republic that caused our government to finally view us as equals. Not people like John Lewis getting their asses kicked, and Martin Luther King getting killed, that caused this country to stand up and take notice of the inequities that existed in society. It was "white guilt".

Damn it, I wish I had found that out earlier. I would have just found college professors, bankers, and bosses who suffered from "white guilt'' and demanded that they give me a break...

Anyway, little black boys and little black girls, don't let this discourage you. Study hard, work hard, and do not bow to outside influences. You hold the future in your hands and you can be anything in life that you set your mind to. "White guilt" is officially over, but unfortunately, idiots like Mr. Adkins are still around.

Oped here.