George Wallace 2016.

The following editorial ---from a man I respect--- is very apropos, because it's just days before we vote for the next president of these divided states of America. 

"Some people get angry when I and others compare Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to George Wallace. What they’re forgetting, or perhaps never knew if they’re too young, is that Wallace didn’t run for president in 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976 as a segregationist, though he was one; he ran as a populist defender of blue-collar workers against elitism and an intrusive federal government.

“I am in this race,” Wallace said in a Fourth of July speech in 1964, “because I believe the American people have been pushed around long enough and that they, like you and I, are fed up with the continuing trend toward a socialist state which now subjects the individual to the dictates of an all-powerful central government.”

What’s somewhat astonishing about Trump’s seemingly unwavering appeal to the same demographic that supported Wallace is that he has none of Wallace’s common-man bona fides. Trump was born into a rich family that gave him everything he needed to succeed, including millions of dollars to establish his own real estate business. Wallace was born dirt poor into a family of farmers in Clio, Ala., where he played with black kids as a child.

The first time I was supposed to meet Wallace, I didn’t. Or rather, I wouldn’t. It was 1972. I was home from my freshman year at a college in Kansas and had a summer job in the audiology lab at Spain Rehabilitation Center in Birmingham. Wallace was brought there for therapy after being paralyzed by a gunman in an assassination attempt in May in Laurel, Md.

Wallace was also fitted with a hearing aid in the audiology lab, but I didn’t see him there. As his stay at Spain neared an end, however, someone came up with the idea of holding a reception so all the hospital workers could meet the governor personally. I wasn’t the only black employee who had to do some soul-searching about being cordial to the man who had stood in the door of the University of Alabama in a vain attempt to keep it segregated.

I didn’t have to worry about any retribution from a boss who might not like my doing anything that reflected poorly on him. But I went to the reception area anyway, mostly out of curiosity to see what Wallace looked like. I got into the long line; but with only about a dozen people between me and Wallace, I stepped out. He kept shaking hands. I walked away.

It wasn’t too many years later that I did meet Wallace, more than once, as a reporter for United Press International in the 1980s covering events where he was the speaker. I remember him cupping a hand around his deaf ear when he was asked a question he didn’t want to answer. I don’t remember shaking his hand. With a notebook and a pen in mine, I probably never did.

Despite the two men’s different backgrounds, it’s easy to see why Trump appeals to the same type of voters as Wallace. Wallace had a knack for expressing the frustrations of white, mostly working-class men who saw themselves as victims of an intrusive government that they felt was forcing them to be more open-minded about people and ideas that they didn’t like. Trump’s midnight tweets may lack the bite of a Wallace stump speech, but they achieve the same goal.

Wallace rallies, like Trump’s, often became violent when demonstrators who didn’t drink his Kool-Aid showed up. Trump followers, like Wallace’s, praise him for being politically incorrect and telling it like it is, no matter who might be offended. Wallace enjoyed the support of church people, just as the religious right has jumped aboard the Trump bandwagon based on his claim to be pro-life.

Wallace never became president. But in 1968, like Trump today, he made a lot of people nervous. As an independent, Wallace won 10 million votes, 13 percent of all those cast, and carried Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. He ran as a Democrat in 1972 and won the Maryland and Michigan primaries, but his campaigning ended the day he was shot. With Wallace confined to a wheelchair, his 1976 campaign fizzled.

Trump is going to do better than Wallace, if the polls are right, and that is disturbing to me. Trump reminds me of Wallace. But at least Wallace, speaking at the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s former church, Dexter Avenue Baptist in Montgomery, apologized in 1979 for his racist politics. “I have learned what suffering means,” he said. “In a way that was impossible, I think I can understand something of the pain. … I know I contributed to that pain, and I can only ask your forgiveness.” [More here]

I agree with you Mr. Jackson, sorry is not a word that you will ever hear from Donald trump. As a result, George Wallace might have actually been a better man ---than trump is today--- when he died. 

We all live in that "twisted world".

Man this Incognito Miami Dolphins story will not go away.  It seems that everyone has their two cents worth on this ever evolving story.

Now here comes former coach, Bill Parcells, to defend Incognito's behavior.

"Bill Parcells reportedly says Richie Incognito was "a model citizen" when the Hall of Famer brought him to Miami, questions whether Jonathan Martin really wanted to play football and cautions that outsiders can't understand the NFL locker room environment but "it works."

Clearly this type of behavior doesn't work if Incognito was kicked off multiple teams because of his behavior in the locker room.

Anyway, this is the type of reaction I would expect from Parcells who was somewhat of a bully himself.

The best take on this story comes from a guy who I am not fan of, but who, from time to time, will make a good point.

While I don't quite agree with the NFL locker room prison analogy, and as bad as Richie Incognito was he is no George Wallace, I think that Jason Whitlock's take on this sad episode is required reading for all.

"Mass incarceration has turned segments of Black America so upside down that a tatted-up, N-word-tossing white goon is more respected and accepted than a soft-spoken, highly intelligent black Stanford graduate.

According to a story in the Miami Herald, black Dolphins players granted Richie Incognito "honorary" status as a black man while feeling little connection to Jonathan Martin.

Welcome to Incarceration Nation, where the mindset of the Miami Dolphins' locker room mirrors the mentality of a maximum-security prison yard and where a wide swath of America believes the nonviolent intellectual needs to adopt the tactics of the barbarian.

I don't blame Jonathan Martin for walking away from the Dolphins and checking himself into a hospital seeking treatment for emotional distress. The cesspool of insanity that apparently is the Miami locker room would test the mental stability of any sane man. Martin, the offspring of Harvard grads, a 24-year-old trained at some of America's finest academic institutions, is a first-time offender callously thrown into an Attica prison cell with Incognito and Aaron Hernandez's BFF Mike Pouncey. Dolphins warden Jeff Ireland and deputy warden Joe Philbin put zero sophisticated thought into what they were doing when they drafted Martin in the second round in 2012.

You don't put Jonathan Martin in a cell with Incognito and Pouncey. You draft someone else, and let another team take Martin. The Dolphins don't have the kind of environment to support someone with Martin's background. It takes intelligence and common sense to connect with and manage Martin. Those attributes appear to be in short supply in Miami.

"Richie is honorary," a black former Dolphins player told Miami Herald reporter Armando Salguero. "I don't expect you to understand because you're not black. But being a black guy, being a brother is more than just about skin color. It's about how you carry yourself. How you play. Where you come from. What you've experienced. A lot of things."

I'm black. And I totally understand the genesis of this particular brand of stupidity and self-hatred. Mass Incarceration, its bastard child, Hurricane Illegitimacy, and their marketing firm, commercial hip-hop music, have created a culture that perpetrates the idea that authentic blackness is criminal, savage, uneducated and irresponsible. The tenets of white supremacy and bigotry have been injected into popular youth culture. The blackest things a black man can do are loudly spew the N-word publicly and react violently to the slightest sign of disrespect or disagreement.

Yeah, Richie Incognito is an honorary black. And Jonathan Martin is a sellout.
"I don't have a problem with Richie," Dolphins receiver Mike Wallace was quoted in Salguero's story. "I love Richie."

Yeah, the Dolphins are circling the wagons around Incognito. I get Ryan Tannehill's defense of his Pro Bowl left guard. He needs him. He doesn't believe the Dolphins can protect him or win games without Incognito. There's a popular belief you can't consistently win football games without a few "thugs" like Incognito in your locker room. Makes you wonder how Stanford competes with USC, Oregon, UCLA, etc., every year. You wonder how Nebraska and Oregon survived after booting Incognito. You wonder why three NFL teams let him go. Maybe he's not as essential as the myth-makers would have you believe.
But what makes me want to check into a mental hospital is Miami's black players' unconditional love of Incognito and indifference to Martin.

It points to our fundamental lack of knowledge of our own history in this country. We think the fake tough guy, the ex-con turned rhetoric spewer was more courageous than the educated pacifist who won our liberation standing in the streets, absorbing repeated ass-whippings, jail and a white assassin's bullet. We fell for the okeydoke.

We think Malcolm X was blacker than Martin Luther King Jr.
I'm as guilty as anybody. I've read X's autobiography a half-dozen times. I own Spike Lee's movie about X and watch it a couple of times a year. I love Malcolm X. But I'm not an idiot. MLK liberated me. MLK blazed the proper path to respect, progress and achievement. Barack Obama stands on MLK's shoulders. And so does Jonathan Martin."

Richie Incognito is an "honorary" bigot, standing on the shoulders of Gov. George Wallace. The fact that a group of young black men in the Dolphins' locker room can't see that speaks to the level of ignorance unleashed by Mass Incarceration, Hurricane Illegitimacy and commercial hip-hop." [More]

Well, MLK AND Malcolm X liberated you, but I get the point.

The Dolphins players are not school teachers, they are football players, so I don't expect them to be as sophisticated about this issue as the author. But I do expect them to have a certain amount of knowledge about the culture and the society in which they live, and it's about time some of these brothers start learning to embrace that which is good and not being benighted and ignorant all of their lives.

Mr. Whitlock, your article (this time) was spot on. It was written for ESPN, so hopefully some of these brothers in the NFL will log on to read instead of watching just for their highlights.

Another field Negro found

Good afternoon field Negro. Your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to share interesting articles by fellow field Negroes with the readers of your blog. These types of articles can help them to understand, that they are not the only field Negroes out here trying to square modern day America with its history.

Below is an editorial written by a field Negro named Harold Jackson. Copy it, paste it, and publish it on your blog for all the world to see. As usual, If any of your readers happen to be sell outs, or house Negroes in disguise, you must disavow any knowledge of their presence.

Fortunately, and thanks to the power of the world wide web, this article will not self destruct in five seconds.

By Harold Jackson
Inquirer Columnist

"The man who tried to assassinate George Wallace will soon be free after spending 35 years in a Maryland prison.

Arthur Bremer could be released before December because of time earned for good behavior. The announcement last week ignited a flood of memories for me.

Wallace was shot in a suburb near Washington while running for president in 1972. About three months later, the racist governor of Alabama was brought to a Birmingham hospital where I had a summer job.

Spain Rehabilitation Center was known nationally for its work with spinal-cord-injury victims. Bremer's bullets had left Wallace paralyzed and forced him to abandon his presidential campaign.

I had one of those make-work summer jobs for college students, and had been assigned to the audiology/speech pathology lab run by Dr. Samuel Fletcher. I mostly ran errands, and Dr. Fletcher taught me to do some simple statistical calculations for a cleft-palate study.
Wallace was at Spain a week or so, I think. Every employee had to get new photo security cards before his arrival. But few of us were allowed into the same area when he was receiving physical therapy.

One day it was announced that a reception would be held so every Spain employee could meet the governor. I immediately became concerned.

Wallace and the word despicable were synonymous to me. I blamed him for the venomous environment that sparked the Ku Klux Klan bombing of Birmingham's Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963.

Four little girls were killed in the blast. One went to my school. Her mother taught there. Her father was my family's milkman.

By the summer of 1972, I was totally into black power. My mind had been Afrocentrically shaped while in the Upward Bound program for high school students at black Miles College. Later, I became a leader in the black student union at mostly white Baker University in Kansas.
Meet George Wallace? I don't think so.

But the situation was delicate. I didn't want to offend Dr. Fletcher or my other coworkers. So, when the time came, I dutifully joined the reception line. Other African American employees did the same.

I kept thinking and thinking. What should I do? I was about a dozen people away from being the next person to shake the governor's hand when I finally just walked away.
Years later as a reporter, I covered Wallace and even shook his hand at least once. It was the professional thing to do.

Before Wallace died in 1998, he confessed his sin as a racist and asked for forgiveness. Many black people forgave him. Many had voted for him when he ran for reelection after being shot.
I never did, even though I do believe he changed.

The South has greatly changed, too, from those days when it took a federal order to get Wallace to stand aside so the University of Alabama could be integrated.
But even today, vestiges of those racist times remain. Events occur in and outside Dixie that make you question how much progress has been made.

Consider the case of the Jena Six. They are six black high school students in a small Louisiana town. In December, they were charged with attempted murder for allegedly beating up a white student who suffered only minor injuries in a fight.

Contrast the attempted-murder charges with the simple battery charge lodged around the same time against a white student identified as the leader of a gang that had assaulted a black student who was punched and beaten with beer bottles.

Both incidents blossomed from racial arguments that began after a handful of black students congregated under a tree at Jena High School supposedly reserved for white students. Three nooses later were hung from the whites-only tree. Verbal sparring in and outside school eventually led to the fights and criminal charges.

The blatant inequity of the attempted-murder charges leveled at the black students has been denounced by various civil rights groups, including the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. No matter what ultimately happens in court, the defendants' lives will never be the same. They will forever feel like victims of a two-tiered system of justice.
It's hard to believe that 30 years after I couldn't make myself shake George Wallace's hand, there are still places in America where people can't even stand under a tree without being threatened because of their skin color.

My children are grown. When they were little, I prayed the world would be much changed by the time they became adults. It has changed, but not enough. Discrimination lives. There are hearts and minds yet to be conquered. "

Mr. Jackson, I wouldn't have shook the mother fucker's hand either!