Open thread.

Let's call this open thread Wednesday.

Field hands, please tell me what you think of this video.

And do you really believe that racism can actually kill you?

Negro PSA: Trump rally in progress, appraoch with caution.

"Once again a Donald Trump supporter has been caught on camera attacking a protester at one of the presidential candidate’s rallies.

The Daily Gazette‘s Kate Seckinger captured the incident as it happened Monday in Albany. In the video, a group of protesters can be seen clashing with rallygoers, when another man runs up and grabs the protester in the face. As he’s pulled away by the other rallygoers, the man slaps the protester across the face.

MSNBC caught up with the man afterwards, who said his name was Mike and explained his actions. “I have my personal rights and my personal space. They’re gonna start yelling about some bullshit, I’ll snatch your ass up. That’s all,” he explained.

“Hell yeah!” Mike responded when asked if he was a Trump supporter. “He’s no bullshit. All balls. Fuck you all balls. That’s what I'm about'"

 

You have to wonder what it is about "the blacks"  that sets off these trump supporters so much.

 

Since when is it illegal to yell about "some bullshit"? This is America, and the last time I checked political protest was perfectly legal.

 

But we can't put all the blame on a few knuckleheads who attend trump rallies to flex their racist muscles. Check out what has been happening on the republican news network, otherwise known as FOX.

 

Their number one host chose to say the following to trump about black people:

 

"While grilling Donald Trump on Monday evening about how he’d boost employment for black youth, Bill O'Reilly interrupted to make the truly bizarre claim that many black people are “ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads.”

 

....Trump declared he will sway the black vote with a purely economic message. “If you look at President Obama, he’s been a president for almost 8 years,” he said, “and with African-American youth, you have a 59 percent unemployment.”

 

And then seemingly invoking his long-running obsession with the fatuous idea that rappers represent the whole of the black community, O’Reilly asked: “But how are you going to get jobs for them? Many of them are ill-educated and have tattoos on their foreheads..."

Poor Bill really has a sick obsession with black folks. Maybe the man who his wife left him for is black. That would explain a lot.  

For the record, if you do a Google search of forehead tattoos you will find more white guys than black ones with face ink.  And then there is that "ill-educated" line he threw out there, which, quite frankly, I find laughable.

I would love to have Bill meet some of my friends and family sometime. I am sure that it would be a real eye opening experience for the bullheaded racist from Long Island.

Sadly, it's as if O'Reilly was trying to outdo trump in the racist department. Maybe he wanted to score political points for trump by comparing himself to him, which would only make trump seem more normal and less racist to the voting public.

Maybe he will select O'Reilly to be his running mate. 

*Pic from mediaite.com




 

 

  

 

 

 

A kinder, gentler war on drugs.

Good for President Obama to declare war on drug addiction. It's a war that we must fight, and one that we cannot afford to lose.

America is in the middle of a serious drug epidemic, and it is taking the lives of countless American children in places that we never expected to see drug addiction and dependency becoming a problem.

The sate of Vermont, for instance, has a serious heroin epidemic on its hands, and not even Bernie can stop it. It has gotten so bad in that state that the poor governor dedicated his entire State of the State address to the problem. And of course we all know that Vermont is not alone.

Contrast how president Obama is dealing with America's latest drug problem to how our government dealt with a similar problem having to do with drugs over 25 years ago. In fact, some would argue, the government actually created the problem for certain communities.

Back then it was incarceration and punishment. Now it's treatment and counseling. President Obama's war on drugs is gentler than previous ones, and I suspect that I know why.

Today's drug crises is being driven by heroin, and guess which demographic uses more heroin than everyone else? If you said young white kids, move to the head of the class. 

The following is from the New York Times:

"When the nation’s long-running war against drugs was defined by the crack epidemic and based in poor, predominantly black urban areas, the public response was defined by zero tolerance and stiff prison sentences. But today’s heroin crisis is different. While heroin use has climbed among all demographic groups, it has skyrocketed among whites; nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

And the growing army of families of those lost to heroin — many of them in the suburbs and small towns — are now using their influence, anger and grief to cushion the country’s approach to drugs, from altering the language around addiction to prodding government to treat it not as a crime, but as a disease." [Source] 

Of course it's not a "crime". Crime would mean that something wrong is being done. Remember, as is damn near everything else in America, not all drug addictions are created equal.  

So now we are collectively shocked that we have such a problem with drugs in our country. Now that drugs are in our children's bedrooms, and hidden in the back of the family mini vans, we are finally realizing that we have a problem. And we realize that it is a problem that can have a negative long lasting effect on society. You know, kind of like crack cocaine did with certain segments of the black population back in the day. 

Of course their families will never recover, because their family members are serving long jail times for possessing small amounts of drugs, and there was no treatment offered to those who got hooked and couldn't get off until they were dead. The remedy for the drug epidemic facing black America  then , was draconian punishment brought on by strict sentencing guidelines, and "tougher" law enforcement. 

Quite a few politicians bolstered their careers by telling white America that they would keep them safe from the drugs those blacks were using and the type of people peddling them. (I see you Bill and Hillary) Now, I suspect. politicians will use the opposite tact to gain brownie points with voters as well. (I see you President Obama)

"At Courtney’s funeral, they decided to acknowledge the reality that redefined their lives: Their bright, beautiful daughter, just 20, who played the French horn in high school and dreamed of living in Hawaii, had been kicked out of the Marines for drugs. Eventually, she overdosed at her boyfriend’s grandmother’s house, where she died alone."

There are a lot of sad and tragic stories like Courtney's out there. Hopefully we will be smarter with the new war on drugs than we were the old one.

*Pic from youtube.com

    

Politics and America's "race problem".

Tonight I feature an essay by Sam Fulwood III, which addresses racism and politics in America.

"After a career spent cataloguing and commenting on the American political scene—nearly 30 years as a newspaper journalist and, more recently, as a public policy observer—I am rarely personally offended by anything that politicians say or do.

But recently, two news stories exposed a level of political mendacity that set my heart racing and blood boiling.

Even now, my anger has yet to abate after reading journalist Dan Baum’s April cover story in Harper’s Magazine. In that article, Baum quoted John Ehrlichman—a former aide to President Richard Nixon who served a year and half prison sentence for his role in the Watergate scandal—as saying the Nixon administration’s war on drugs campaign was deliberately designed to target black Americans.

According to the story, in 1994 Ehrlichman told Baum that—as Nixon’s chief domestic adviser—he was aware that the administration was aiming to vilify black Americans by focusing the war on drugs in black communities. As Baum recalled:

“You want to know what this was really all about?” [Ehrlichman] asked with the bluntness of a man who, after public disgrace and a stretch in federal prison, had little left to protect. “The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar left and black people. You understand what I’m saying?
“We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news.  

“Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.”

In a second maddening story, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.) delivered a speech to a room full of interns in which he offered a mea culpa for his repeated comments vilifying poor people—or, as Ryan put it:

There was a time when I would talk about a difference between “makers” and “takers” in our country, referring to people who accepted government benefits. But as I spent more time listening, and really learning the root causes of poverty, I realized I was wrong.

“Takers” wasn’t how to refer to a single mom stuck in a poverty trap, just trying to take care of her family. Most people don’t want to be dependent. And to label a whole group of Americans that way was wrong. I shouldn’t castigate a large group of Americans to make a point.

These two stories, ostensibly unrelated, illustrate in bold strokes why the United States continues to suffer from a so-called race problem. And they help explain why so many people deny the root causes of contemporary and systemic racism—or even that racism exists at all.

Indeed, for a great number of Americans, the idea of racism is an objectionable act: Sending out offensive fliers on college campuses or firing an employee based on her race. Those are simple, easy-to-see cases. And though they are highly offensive to fair-minded people, they have also become relatively rare.

But the much more common yet harder-to-define forms of racism are invisibly embedded in our national culture, so subtly ingrained as to go unnoticed—to the extent that anyone who points them out is cast as a societal outlier or, worse, labeled a reverse racist for noticing what is occurring around them.

And that is why I am so outraged by what Erhlichman—who died in 1999—is reported to have said and done; ditto for Speaker Ryan’s too-late-for-me apologia. By spreading lies about black and economically distressed Americans, these public officials infected our national culture with vile catchphrases, imagery and attitudes that allowed others to propose, support and enact policies with real and damaging consequences.

This is how systemic racism lives, breeds and thrives.

To be specific, Nixon’s war on drugs pushed such measures as mandatory minimum sentencing laws; no-knock raid warrants; and more harsh law enforcement measures that were used disproportionately against black Americans.

And the makers versus takers rhetoric that Speaker Ryan popularized as a Tea Party darling during his 2012 vice presidential campaign is still a part of the conservative rants.

As The Atlantic ’s Derek Thompson pointed out, Speaker Ryan’s sweet words are not matched by sweeter policy prescriptions.

His penance has not been matched by a broader effort to change the substance beneath the words,” Thompson wrote in reaction to Ryan’s speech. “For years, he has put forth a budget that would provide the largest tax cuts in history for the wealthy while gutting income support and health care assistance for the middle-class and poor.

There really is something odious and damaging to the country’s culture when conservative leaders advance their careers and policies by denigrating black and poor people. Worse of all, the conflation of racism and privilege allows them to do so without bearing an appropriate reputational penalty or diminishing their standing in society.

Politics ain’t beanbag. I do understand how the game is played—which is to say that it usually does not bother me to hear political leaders pander to supportive audiences. But sometimes their hurtful words are more than sounds in the air. Sometimes they lie, and these lies cling to our culture, changing the way common folk think and react. Sometimes they knowingly harm wide swaths of our citizenry. That’s outrageously maddening and beyond the pale of politics that I can stomach.

Sam Fulwood III is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress and director of the CAP Leadership Institute. His work with the Center’s Progress 2050 project examines the impact of policies on the nation when there will be no clear racial or ethnic majority by the year 2050." [Source]

Thoughts?

*Pic from youtube.com

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic.

Example: What's that smell?


*Pic courtesy of Peter van Agtmael/Magnum Photos for the Washington Post.

Things I learned this week.

 It's been an interesting week. And, as is always the case, I learned some interesting things in my Field Negro travels.

I learned that contrary to popular perception it's not only black men who are deadbeats, and that there are some irresponsible white dudes out here playing rolling stone to multiple kids that they can't afford as well. (14 kids by the age of 26 has to be some kind of record.)

I learned that not all mothers should be mothers. (How the hell do you get an octopus in a toddler's throat?!)

I learned that sex might be the key to a longer life.

I learned that Donald trump is a more horrible person than I thought. 

I learned that there is no such thing as non-lethal force when it comes to police and black people.  (Even black women.)

I learned that Bernie Sanders doesn't think that Hillary is qualified to be president. 

I learned that Bill Clinton let this being the first black president thing get to his head.

I learned that they don't like Donald trump in the Midwest.

I learned that they don't like Ted Cruz in New York.

I learned, after only a couple of games, that the Phillies will suck again this year.

I learned that the cop body slamming young girl craze is spreading.

I learned that there are still  a lot of young black kids out there who make me very proud.

I learned that in American you can get a life sentence for stealing candy.

Finally, I learned that there is no place like home.

The education of Wendy Bell.

 I am sorry to hear about Wendy Bell losing her job, I really am. I, like quite a few black folks, ripped her on twitter for her clueless remarks about black on black crime after the horrific mas murder near Pittsburgh, recently. But still, I certainly didn't want her to get fired for her post.

Trust me, I am not one to try and silence people for openly giving their thoughts about race and other touchy subjects. If we don't talk and express ourselves openly, we will never solve our problems when it comes to matters of race.

The thing is, though, as I stated about the white writer in my previous post, one should at least try to educate themselves about the subject and try to understand the sensitivities of the group they feel the need to pontificate about before they star writing or talking.

Ms. Bell had every right as a citizen to express her displeasure at the horrific killings in her city, but writing as if this could only happen in poor black neighborhoods was misguided. The fact is that affluent young white men kill people in droves as well, and her five children are more likely to be murdered by other young white children than they are those poor "fatherless" boys from the hood that she posted about.

Ironically, at least for me, the lines in her blog post that was most troubling didn't really have anything to do with her writing about the actual killings.

"She also praised a black restaurant worker, observing that he went about his work “with a rhythm and a step that gushed positivity,” which also drew criticism. "

Yeah that line about the black restaurant worker's "rhythm" was mind blowing. You would think that a woman who talks to the public for a living would not be so clueless as to use such an obvious stereotypical word to describe  the Magic Negro in her post.

I am sure that this was a teachable moment for Ms. Bell. She probably regrets her post now for obvious reasons.

Still, if I were her I wouldn't worry too much. I mean if Mark Fuhrman can land on his feet over at FOX VIEWS, I am sure that the sky is the limit for her.

Finally, speaking of black on black crime, I see that Ray Lewis  has weighed in on the  subject as well. Ray is black.

“I’m trying to figure out why no one is paying attention to black men killing black men,” Lewis said.

...Why do we always find ourselves half the victims,” the 40 year old said. “Why do we always find ourselves half the victims, and now we have the separation once again that we’re being victimized because of one bad white cop, two bad white cops, three bad white cops, killing a young black brother. But every day we have black-on-black crime, killing each other? Police in Chicago reported 677 shootings this year. Last year, it was 359. The March murder rate rose by 29 percent, but we’re not rioting in the streets [when] black on black killing each other,....”

First of all, Ray Lewis lecturing us about black on black crime is like Hannibal Lecter lecturing us about the evils of cannibalism.

Psst, Ray Ray, maybe you forgot about that little incident in Atlanta a few years back. As far as I can tell Jacinth Baker and Richard Lollar are both black. Oh, and we never found that white suit you were wearing. You know, the one with the victim's blood stains on it. But I digress.

The thing is, Ray Lewis is not the messenger that should be delivering this message. It's a message, by the way, that I am personally sick of hearing.

For the record, most of us care about black on black killings, and some of us are out here every day trying to do something about it. Just because we choose to address the unnecessary killings of young black men by those in authority, does not mean that we are not as equally outraged when young black men kill each other. We don't need Ray Ray getting on his high horse and preaching to the rest of us about  highlighting injustice when we see it.

He should get on his knees every day and thank the folks who fought against injustice in this country, so that one day he could live a life where he earns millions playing a game he loves. There was a time, in the not too distance past, when his black ass couldn't set foot on an NFL field.

"I’m just asking this one simple thing: When will we appreciate who we are? When will our skin color start paying attention to our own skin color? “I’m trying to figure out how in the month of march there’s more murders in Chicago then there are then there are days in the month. Forty-five murders in the month of [March] in Chicago.”'

Glad you are paying attention, Ray. Here is hoping that you will do more than preach, and that you will start trying to contribute to finding a solution.

*Pic from news.yahoo.com

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article70350907.html#storylink=cpy

 

Studying black people.

  Jonathan Chait is a very white man, and he recently wrote  an article about African Americans and our voting traditions especially as it relates to the democratic party.

It was an interesting take on why the majority of  African Americans vote the way we do, and why, when it comes to the two leading political parties, we tend to choose the donkey over the elephant.

I actually found a lot of what t he wrote to be true, but, like others, I found it a little unsettling that this very white writer thought that he could go into the minds of African Americans and like some member of the Jedi Order play mind tricks on every African American voter in America.  

I think the gist of what he wrote is that black voters are pragmatic almost to a fault, and that the reason Hillary has been able to beat Bernie four to one among black voters is because black voters are afraid of change. (Or something like that. ) I am still not sure where this leaves the 25% of black folks who are voting for Sanders.

"And pragmatism inflects the African-American view of how politicians perform in office. Purists see compromise as a sign of moral failure or weakness, an inability to smash a corrupted system. Pragmatists expect political opposition as normal and enduring. A politician who has their best interests in mind and pushes policy in the proper direction is better than the all-too-common alternative. Sanders’s campaign draws much of its strength from the left-wing critique of Barack Obama’s presidency, which it dismisses as largely feeble half-measures. Sanders has attracted Democrats most discontented with Obama’s progress, while Clinton wins those most satisfied, among whom African-Americans are disproportionately represented. Obviously, Obama’s status as the first black president creates a unique bond with black supporters, but much more than racial affinity is at work here.

As Brett Gadsden, a historian and professor of African-American studies at Emory, told me a few months ago over email, “Black voters have always [been] faced with the difficult choice between candidates who have only offered incremental support for their concerns and have been perfectly willing to turn their backs, albeit to slightly different degrees, on black communities when it was politically expedient.” The decision about how to exert leverage (which is necessarily limited within a racially polarized electorate) is difficult, even agonizing. Any political constituency must navigate the twin imperatives of supporting the better (or less bad) party without letting that party take its support completely for granted."

"Racial affinity". The first African American president in the history of this country --- one who in retrospect has done a pretty decent job--- and the writer makes an issue of "racial affinity" between black voters and the candidate.   

This is what drives black folks like yours truly crazy. This tendency some whites -particularly liberals- have of viewing us as some exotic other to be studied and understood like experimental lab rats.

This was the case of a very liberal recently hired Temple University professor, who had the following to say:

"Goldrick-Rab, who spent five years in Philadelphia when she attended the University of Pennsylvania, said she welcomes the chance to return to an urban setting, where she will be "closer to the students whose lives I study."

"I fell in love with that city when I was a grad student," she said, "and I've been trying to get back ever since."

She plans to spend time in neighborhoods, visit the Housing Authority, and hang out at Community College of Philadelphia, where she previously served as an evaluator of a program that provides legal, counseling, and other services for students in one place.

"They have the population that I've been working on and studying for a long time," she said."

Did you read that? She has been studying us for "a long time." That sound you hear is my head exploding.

No doubt Mr. Chait has been studying us a long time as well, and his intense studying has inspired him to write this puzzling essay about African American pragmatism when it comes to voting.

Memo to Mr. Chait: We are not the only group that votes for what we think is in our best interest. The American electorate is now more polarized than ever because more groups are doing just that.
That has been the American way long before we even had the right to vote.  

Maybe the next time Mr. Chait will focus his effort on writing about another one of the polarized groups in America, and as  the old timers like to say: "Stay out of black folks business."

*Pic from npr.org






 

Cruz control, and Princeton backs a segregationist.

 Congrats to Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders for winning their primaries in cheesehead country tonight.

It has been a tough week for Donald trump, the orange one has made more than a few missteps, and now the cracks are starting to show. (Five different positions on abortion in three days?)

Ted Cruz, who always sounds like he is auditioning for a Shakespearean play, was downright giddy tonight.  I tried listening  to Ted's victory speech but it was hard. That face. Dude was quoting JFK and taking about a safe and "sane" future for the country. He was calling for "unity" for crying out loud. Yes, this Ted Cruz. 

On the dem side Hillary is obviously going to have to get used to Bernie and his peeps "feeling the Bern." The old man is not going away, and neither, apparently, is the FBI.     

Finally, one of America's finest institutions of higher learning has decided to keep their monuments to a racist.

"Princeton University's board of trustees has decided that it will not remove Woodrow Wilson's name from its School of Public and International Affairs and from a residential college, despite student protests over the former president's segregationist views.

At the same time, the trustee committee weighing the issue said the university "needs to be honest and forthcoming about its history." It adds: "This requires transparency in recognizing Wilson's failings and shortcomings as well as the visions and achievements that led to the naming of the school and the college in the first place."

I hear ya Princeton, but being a devoted segregationist and blocking African American students from entering your university is more than just a matter of "failings".

But this is what happens when you are on the wrong side of history, it always comes back to bite you.

*Pic from gawker.com  

Voting rights, and secret money trails.

  I just got back to chez Field, and I couldn't wait to get to my computer.

Before I forget, I would like to thank all of you field hands for keeping me updated while I was off the grid.

Every now and then it's good to get away from the madness.

Anyway, I came home to some good news.

First, good for the supremes for their decision insuring voting rights for all Americans.

Wingnuts tried to  have only "eligible" voters count when voting districts are being counted, but the court said- and rightfully so- that every person should count as an eligible voter, regardless of whether they are considered "eligible" by wingnut standards or not.

Let's call a spade a spade, folks. This move was meant to give predominantly white rural areas more political clout and power. Hey, I am not knocking the hustle, but don't pretend that it was anything else. The old tired narrative that this is to prevent voter fraud is getting old. Especially when the facts show us that there is no such voter fraud taking place.

The second bit of good news is this "Panama Papers" story. (Sounds like a bad movie)

"Over the past year, investigative journalists across the world have been sifting through 11.5 million internal files from the Panamanian law firm Mossack Fonseca.

The files were leaked to the German paper Süddeutsche Zeitung, which shared the huge trove with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists. Stories about the data, which has been dubbed the Panama Papers, have been published by news organizations everywhere from Argentina to Sweden.

We know a lot about the trove of documents, but there's also a lot we don't know. (The ICIJ promises to release a full list of companies and the people linked to them in "early May.")'

It's hard to say what I am looking forward to more; Power coming back on the Starz Network, or the full list of these companies that might be exposed in  May.

It's always good when we can expose greedy charlatans who use their power to make money on the backs of others. 

I suspect that there will be some surprises, but, let's be honest, most of what we will find out is stuff that we already suspected.  

Anyway, I gotta go, I have a couple of  episodes of The Walking Dead to catch up to. 

*Pic from aclu-ky.org

Fill me in.

I have been out of pocket and off the grid, I need y'all to fill me in on what's been happening in these divided states of America.