Finally, some Cowboys I can cheer for, and tased to death in Virginia.

The field Negro education series continues.

Shame on me for not knowing about the following story. It took the events taking place at the University of Missouri over the past few days to bring it to the fore.  

"Mel Hamilton would still wrap the black band around his arm on Oct. 17, 1969, the day that altered his life and so many others. He regrets nothing, except perhaps not taking his fight further. It cost him his spot on the Wyoming football team. It led to four decades of finger-pointing and accusations and racism, he said. Hamilton knows he made the right decision when he sees the pride on his children’s faces when they talk about what he did.

Hamilton is one of the Black 14, a group whose story remained buried in history books until this week, when the stand taken by the Missouri football team kindled memories. Missouri’s players received widespread support and sparked instant results, a reaction diametrically opposite from what Hamilton and his 13 teammates endured.

The day before Wyoming played Brigham Young, 14 black players wore black arm bands in protest of the LDS church’s practice of not allowing blacks into the priesthood. The players marched into Coach Lloyd Eaton’s office and asked if they could wear the arm bands at BYU. With little discussion, Eaton screamed at them and kicked all 14 players, many of them starters, off the team for the rest of the season. Eaton told them they could all go play at historically black colleges. Just three ever played for Wyoming again. On campus, white students met them with hostility and, on occasion, flashed them shotguns as they drove around on the back of pick-up trucks.

“The only parallel was the fact that BYU was going to play them this weekend,” Hamilton said Tuesday morning in a phone conversation. “That is the only parallel. These guys had the support of the white football players on their team as well as the head coach. It was the reverse at Wyoming. We had no support from any of the white players. We had no support at first with any of the white coaches.”

 

The disparate reactions showed how much changed in 45 years: the dynamics between players and coaches, between athletes and their campus and between white students and black students. At Wyoming, players made a minor gesture over a racial issue and were outcast. At Missouri, players threatened a boycott over racial tension and provided the final push to oust a school president and chancellor.

The Black 14 incident created lasting ripples. Wyoming’s football team, then a Western Athletic Conference powerhouse coming off a Sun Bowl victory over Florida State, crumbled as it lost the ability to recruit black players; it still has not matched the heights it reached in the late 1960s. Eaton lost his job after the 1970 season, became a scout for the Green Bay Packers and ultimately died alone in Idaho as “a bitter man,” Hamilton said. Hamilton and his teammates fought a financially draining legal battle that ultimately failed in federal court.

Hamilton was born in South Carolina and raised in North Carolina. In college he fell in love with a woman from Wyoming, and they married and settled in her home town of Casper. Other players, including former NFL players Tony McGee and Joe Williams, scattered across the country. In Wyoming, Hamilton felt the fallout.

“I couldn’t go to have a drink or a wine with my wife without somebody in a drunken stupor pointing at me saying, ‘You are the reason Wyoming is not winning today,’ ” Hamilton said. “It never went away for me.”

Racism infected Hamilton’s life. He became the first black principal in the state. He overheard teachers at his school refer to him using slurs. He woke up one morning and saw three sixes drawn in the snow in his front yard.

“My first principalship was sabotaged by racism,” Hamilton said. “I really think that the Black 14 had a lot to do with that fight there. It never really went under the rug with me. I lived it every day.”

 

Even today at bars and restaurants, when people come up to him to applaud him for his part in the Black 14, Hamilton senses they only want an opening to hear what he thinks. He believes they resent him. It wears on him.

Hamilton said he would still make the same stand. He felt refreshed this week when he saw black Missouri football players threaten to boycott if school president Tim Wolfe did not resign amid anger over his response to racial tension on campus. He called it “a reawakening of the struggle.” He didn’t know if college athletes still had the will to incite change. He does now.

“It just makes me feel proud to watch that all week about Missouri and realize that the struggle was still there, and the kids were still aware that institutional racism is well and alive in America,” Hamilton said. “Although the racism has gone underground, it’s still there. We still have to watch for it, and we still have to react. I had lost faith in the young folks up until now. I didn’t think they had realized the struggles before. I’m glad to see I was wrong.”

Every generation, Hamilton believes, helps the next generation. He sees a line — perhaps not a direct one — from what happened in Wyoming in 1969 to what happened in Missouri on Monday afternoon. Forty-five years ago, Hamilton and 13 teammates engaged in a small protest and met a vile reaction. This week, Missouri players demanded change, and less than 48 hours later, the school president quit.

“See?” Hamilton said. “I obviously can’t take credit for that. But every struggle builds on top of each other. The most important thing is, you fight, you fight, you fight. I’m glad to see the young folk are starting to realize that. We are stronger in numbers.”' [Source]

I hope that you boosters at those powerful SEC  football schools and others are taking note. Can you imagine if your program finds itself in college football obscurity like Wyoming years from now?
Sadly, if you remain insensitive to the needs of your minority students it just might.

Finally, I just saw the video of that poor man (Linwood Lambert) being tased to death in Virginia by law enforcement officials, and it was hard to watch. But I needed to see it, because I have to keep reminding myself of the dangers I face as a man of color when dealing with "color aroused" individuals in positions of authority.

*Pic from The University of Wyoming.

  

A not so fine dessert.

The field Negro education series continues.

Tonight I give you a very well written and heartfelt essay from Allison McGevna , who wrote it for HelloBeautiful.com.

"How do we present the evils of history to the innocent mind and heart of a child?
It’s a question faced time and again by educators and authors on a regular basis. And it’s a debate we need to continuously have, especially as some of the most popular books released are presenting critical, uncomfortable narratives like slavery in a whitewashed light.

One such book is A Fine Dessert: Four Centuries, Four Families, One Delicious Treat by Emily Jenkins and featuring illustrations by Sophie Blackall. The “well-intentioned” book tells the story of the history of a particular dish, blackberry fool (what a name indeed).
As the dish makes its way through history, one of the vignettes makes a stop in slave-era South Carolina, where a mother and daughter prepare the dessert for their White masters.

And that’s where the trouble really begins. In the illustrations and corresponding text, the slave mother and daughter can be seen preparing the meal, smiling as they complete their grim tasks.

Later, when the family has been fed, the mother and daughter huddle together in a cupboard in secret. The author sets the scene:
After waiting table at supper – where the master and his family ate turtle soup, roast turkey, corn cakes and sweet potatoes – they spooned the blackberry fool into yellow dishes and served it. Later, the girl and her mother hid in the closet and licked the bowl clean together. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. Mmmmm. What a fine dessert!

Understandably, this raised a few eyebrows, especially on Twitter. {See link at the end of the post}

In March, The New York Times, wrote a glowing review for the book, albeit with the description of the illustrations as “somewhat unsettling.”

I’m going to try not to get too angry at the sheer “what the fuck, that’s really all you have SAY-ness” of the whole thing. Because if that isn’t the most Captain Obvious declaration, I don’t know what is.
Hell yea, it’s unsettling. Hell yea, we’re tired of seeing this.
No doubt, as many critics have expressed, the authors went in with the absolute best of intentions. Don’t they always?

But a quick sweep of their explanations leaves a thinly-veiled, deep-rooted misrepresentation of the true horrors of slavery. Which frankly, is just as troubling as not including it at all.
In her blog, Blackall, the illustrator writes of the slaves’ depictions:

I wrote about people finding joy in craftsmanship and dessert even within lives of great hardship and injustice—because finding that joy shows something powerful about the human spirit. Slavery is such a difficult truth. At the end of the book, children can see a hopeful, inclusive community.”

The bottom, difficult line in all of this is that, ultimately, the ball was dropped in a major way. I’m sorry if slavery makes people uncomfortable. But guess what? There is no one more uncomfortable with it than Black people, whose ancestors endured it. But that does not mean we can buy into the colorblind narrative this country loves to grasp at with fingers oiled slick with discomfort.

Perhaps, in the illustrators’ mind, this is indeed where we’ve ended up as a society. But the reality of race in this country, as any of us can speak to, is a much darker one. One that is not often hopeful, and even less inclusive.

So absent is this inclusivity that Black people are often only seen in depictions of slavery. Or in some form of servitude, or as one mother found in a toy for her young son, literally in chains.

For a Black child who is reading books like these, there is no empowerment, no rebellion, no images showing characters taking pride in their identity. Instead, they are presented with images of a perpetual state of being less than, with affirmations that their joy is something to conceal and, most sinister of all, in the idea that the completion of tasks can only be a source of pride when they serve to make their White masters happy.

It’s hardly the first time we’ve seen a whitewash of slavery in history books and pop culture. In books and films, happy slaves can be seen everywhere, their smiles erasing the tribulations of Blacks in American history. Their minimized stories serving to placate White guilt. These books, at best, do little to show the true, dark side of the truth. At worst, they reinforce the dangerous suggestion perpetuated by racists everywhere that Black people were, somehow, happy to be in chains.
Jenkins, for her part, admitted that her book fell short of her intended outcome. She wrote:

I have read this discussion and the others with care and attention. I have come to understand that my book, while intended to be inclusive and truthful and hopeful, is racially insensitive. I own that and am very sorry. For lack of a better way to make reparations, I donated the fee I earned for writing the book to We Need Diverse Books.

Still, the book is rapidly on track to becoming one of the year’s most successful children’s books, and is even viewed as a front-runner for the prestigious Caldecott Award.

And so, as books like this continue to come out, we are reminded that we have to remain diligent in our criticisms of them. In spite of our desires to protect them, children are incredibly perceptive, resilient and should be treated as such. And we must continue to tell our stories not in a way that makes adults feel more comfortable, but in a way that tells our youth the whole truth they so deserve." [Source]

Thoughts?

*Pic from npr.org

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We are all in danger, and the "Gentler War on Drugs"

*
"First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me." `Martin Niemöller`

I saw the video of the police going all Rodney King on that frat boy and gal down in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. [Video]

All I have to say is that at some point even these  kids dripping with white privilege will see that if power goes unchecked they, too, will become victims of injustice at some point in their lives.

Now here we have these "normal" college kids waking up to the police gone wild as well.  Let's see if their parents and loved ones become more sympathetic to the plight of young men of color the next time that they see them getting the business from the police in live and living color.

Finally, in case you didn't notice, America has a heroin problem. States with lily white populations have seen an explosion of heroin use over the past few years and it is devastating a lot of these smaller communities far from those evil urban areas. 

Of course we know that there will be no draconian drug laws like the ones passed during the crack epidemic that affected mostly poor people and people of color in the inner cities of America.

That won't be the case this time around, and I am quite sure that America will have a different response to this latest drug crisis.

"The New York Times recently published an article titled, “In Heroin Crisis, White Families Seek Gentler War on Drugs.”

In the piece, middle-class white families, mostly from suburbs and small towns, detail their traumatic experiences with heroin addiction, also known as “smack.” One white New Hampshire man interviewed for the piece talks about how he viewed people battling addiction as “junkies” until he recognized their faces in his own high-achieving, privileged daughter.

Here are some revealing numbers from the piece:

* Deaths from heroin rose to 8,260 in 2013, quadrupling since 2000 and aggravating what some were already calling the worst drug-overdose epidemic in United States history.
 

* Nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

No wonder “compassion” is the word of the day.
 

The article includes the personal and political positions of GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, all of whom have expressed that there is a need to decriminalize addiction. This is a glaring departure from the policies of the party of Ronald Reagan. It was through his backroom dealings with Nicaragua’s Contras that the war on drugs (pdf) intensified as crack cocaine and guns flooded inner cities, laying the groundwork for mass incarceration that has ravaged black communities; yet, here are his political descendants struggling to frame addiction as the health issue it has always been without making the GOP look like the party of hypocrites that it has always been.
 

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also has had to step into the breach in an attempt to sanitize the insidious racism that shades her husband’s legacy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Former President Bill Clinton was complicit in the passage in 1994 of the omnibus crime bill, which included the “Three Strikes Law,” thus expanding the war on drugs. He has since acknowledged and apologized for his role in the devastation that the bill caused for black families, but it’s much too little, much too late.

Here are some revealing numbers from the piece:

* Deaths from heroin rose to 8,260 in 2013, quadrupling since 2000 and aggravating what some were already calling the worst drug-overdose epidemic in United States history.

* Nearly 90 percent of those who tried heroin for the first time in the last decade were white.

No wonder “compassion” is the word of the day.
 

The article includes the personal and political positions of GOP presidential candidates Carly Fiorina, Jeb Bush and Chris Christie, all of whom have expressed that there is a need to decriminalize addiction. This is a glaring departure from the policies of the party of Ronald Reagan. It was through his backroom dealings with Nicaragua’s Contras that the war on drugs (pdf) intensified as crack cocaine and guns flooded inner cities, laying the groundwork for mass incarceration that has ravaged black communities; yet, here are his political descendants struggling to frame addiction as the health issue it has always been without making the GOP look like the party of hypocrites that it has always been.
 

Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton also has had to step into the breach in an attempt to sanitize the insidious racism that shades her husband’s legacy at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Former President Bill Clinton was complicit in the passage in 1994 of the omnibus crime bill, which included the “Three Strikes Law,” thus expanding the war on drugs. He has since acknowledged and apologized for his role in the devastation that the bill caused for black families, but it’s much too little, much too late." [More]

Hmmm, it seems that the "first black president" wasn't looking out for his constituents after all.

*Pic from totalfratmove.com

 

Justice in Louisiana and field Negroes on the football field.

Let me start this post by saying that the authorities in Louisiana did the right thing in charging those two police officers in the shooting death of that six year old boy. If it turns out that they acted appropriately they will be vindicated, if not, they will suffer the consequences for their actions.

I have said over and over that being a police officer is a tough job, and we can't have people on the force who, for whatever reason, do not act appropriately or are not properly trained.

For the record, the six year old boy was white and the two police officers charged were African Americans. If you are an African American and you are not as passionate about getting justice for this poor child's family shame on you. If you are from the majority population and you never questioned the conduct of the police when the races are reversed but do now, well then shame on you as well.

"We took some of the body cam footage. I'm not gonna talk about it, but I'm gonna tell you this -- it is the most disturbing thing I've seen and I will leave it at that," State Police Col. Michael Edmonson said at a news conference late Friday. "That little boy was buckled into the front seat of that vehicle and that is how he died."

Sad indeed. But it is not the "most disturbing thing" that I have ever seen when it comes to police misconduct, but I do hope that it will be the last.

   Finally, congrats to the football players of the University of Missouri for displaying true field Negro behavior.  I love when athletes who are in a high profile position become socially active and use their influence and power to try and influence social change.

"Black football players at the University of Missouri have joined calls demanding the ouster of the president of the state's four-campus university system over alleged inaction against racism on campus.

About 30 players made their thoughts known Saturday night in a tweet posted by Missouri's Legion of Black Collegians.

The athletes of color on the University of Missouri football team truly believe "Injustice Anywhere is a threat to Justice Everywhere," read the tweet. "We will no longer participate in any football related activities until President Tim Wolfe resigns or is removed due to his negligence toward marginalized students' experience."

 

The players' move is the latest salvo in a spiraling debate over the experiences of African-American students at Missouri, who have complained of inaction on the part of school leaders in dealing with racism on the overwhelmingly white campus.

 

Black student leaders have complained of students openly using racial slurs and other incidents. In August, someone used feces to draw a swastika, drawing condemnation from black and Jewish student organizations.

 

One student is on a hunger strike demanding action. Graduate student Jonathan L. Butler started the hunger strike last week, demanding Wolfe's removal." [More]

Good for these players. Maybe they can force these institutions who profit from their athleticism to get serious about addressing similar concerns in the future.

*Pic from stltoday.com





 

CAPTION SATURDAY.

I need a caption for this pic. 


Example: I will have that past due payment to you in three days.  



*Pic from the washingtonpost.com

Open thread.

Mic check mic check.

Tonight is open thread night. So grab the mic and tell me what you think about whatever you want.

But, before you do that, I have a question: Do you think that as black folks we were better off when we were segregated as a country?

There has been a lot written in the affirmative by black thinkers and I just wanted the opinion of you field hands.

Here is what Dr. Boyce Watkins thinks:

"My take?  Integration is a mixed bag.  Most of us will always give thanks to Dr. King and others who had the courage to fight for us to have equal rights. But there is something wrong with a world in which black people feel that they must be sitting next to white people in order to feel entirely human.

Notice that whites weren’t fighting to get to our lunch counters, to move into our neighborhoods or to attend our schools, they still aren’t.  But we’ve always felt that white is right and that getting their validation and acceptance was the key to elevating our own self-worth, when the truth is that we were worthy all along.  It is self-sufficiency that builds strength, not unconditional assimilation.  That is my two cents." [More]

When hero worhip goes wrong.

Be careful how you choose your heroes, because sometimes you just never know.

Remember when the folks in the right-wingnut media were blaming the president for the death of Fox Lake, Illinois, Lt. Charles "GI Joe" Gliniewicz ?  Fox Views bombarded us with news clips, editorials, and sound bites from pundits about cops lives mattering, too. They screeched and squealed that the president and the black lives matter movement created a climate in this country that put a target on the backs of police officers.

Let's forget, for a minute, that police officer shootings are actually down this year, and that their hero, "GI Joe", was actually a fraud, and, quite possibly, a very bad person.

"More information is coming out about Joseph Gliniewicz, the Fox Lake officer who killed himself while everyone believed it was murder. And in addition to the criminal acts the local police have already revealed, Gliniewicz apparently wanted to put a hit on the village administrator.

A Lake County Sheriff’s Office spokesman revealed today that Gliniewicz was worried village administrator Anne Marrin would find out about his embezzling, and so he sent a text trying to set up a meeting with a “high-ranking gang member” to put a hit on her.

There was also a text about potentially planting something on her, possibly related to the cocaine investigators found in Gliniewicz’s desk." [Source]

He was a real Boy Scout that one.

Anyway, speaking of heroes to the people on the right, it might be time for someone to tell Dr. Ben to quit before he embarrasses himself  more than he already has. I mean, seriously? Corn stored in the pyramids by Joseph? Rapping commercials to appeal to African America constituents? (Why don't you just give out free fried chicken while you are at it?) Throw in the story of knifing his classmate ("The violent episodes he has detailed in his book, in public statements and in interviews, include punching a classmate in the face with his hand wrapped around a lock, leaving a bloody three-inch gash in the boy's forehead; attempting to attack his own mother with a hammer following an argument over clothes; hurling a large rock at a boy, which broke the youth's glasses and smashed his nose; and, finally, thrusting a knife at the belly of his friend with such force that the blade snapped when it luckily struck a belt buckle covered by the boy's clothes.

"I was trying to kill somebody," ) and we have the makings of a real psycho on our hands.

 

And to think, this man is leading in the GOP primary. If that isn't enough to scare you about the people you share a county with I don't know what will.

 

"Obamacare is the worse thing to happen to this nation since slavery". 

 

Help us all!!

 

 

 

 

The violence narrative.

     How many of you  heard about the following story?

 "PLATTE, S.D. — Financial issues appear to have contributed to an educational cooperative business manager’s decision to kill his wife and four children with a shotgun before setting the family home ablaze and then shooting himself, South Dakota’s attorney general said Tuesday.

Attorney General Marty Jackley released the results of his office’s investigation of the September deaths at a news conference in Platte, a few miles north of the burned ruins of the home where the bodies of Scott and Nicole Westerhuis and their children Kailey, Jaeci, Connor and Michael were found.

Their deaths occurred just hours after the state Department of Education informed Mid-Central Educational Cooperative that it was losing a $4.3 million federal contract for GEAR UP, a program that seeks to improve Native Americans’ college readiness, because of financial problems and accounting failures." [Source]

So this animal is having financial problems and he goes out and kills his wife and four children.
And yet, the story barely registers in the news cycle.

Compare this to the following story:

"Representatives for Five Guys restaurant chain are speaking out after video surfaced of a huge fight at their Miami Beach location, calling the brawl "simply unacceptable."

 

The incident happened at the Five Guys location at 1500 Washington Avenue near 15th Street in Miami Beach.

 

It's unclear what sparked the fight, but the video shows a female patron and several employees involved. Dozens of customers were inside the store when it happened, many recording the incident with their cellphones.

 

According to a witness, the woman was being loud and drunk, but didn't get physical. The employees hit her with cups and then things started to escalate." [Story with video]

 

This story is all over the news, and it is a major water cooler conversation starter all over the country.

 

Why?

 

A bunch of young ladies brawling at a burger joint is bigger news than a father slaughtering his four children and his wife and torching their home.  

 

Think about that for a minute, and think about why this might be so. I think it fits into a narrative, and everyone, including the press, has to play into that narrative.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Polite profiling.

A few years back I was driving with my wife from the Baton Rouge, Louisiana airport to visit her folks for the Thanksgiving holidays. We were heading up highway 190 towards St. Landry Parish in a rental with out of state plates, when, wouldn't you know it, we got pulled over by a local sheriff outside of a little town called Livonia.

Me: Furious. Wife: Eh.

"Howdy folks, you were speeding a little bit there. License and registration, please?"

Me: More furious. Wife: Smiling.

"Sure officer, we just rented this car. We are on my way to see my family in Opelousas." Wifey takes over because I was still furious and Wifey wants her husband home for the holidays, and not in some Louisiana jail cell.

The sheriff, still smiling, and still very polite, started relaxing. I could literally see the change coming over him as he started bonding with my wife.

"Oh,  are you from around these parts?" My wife's accent started changing. "Yep , born and raised; went to Lawtell High and LSU. Going home for some good Louisiana fried turkey." It was on now. "Oh a Tiger gal, huh? Well welcome home. Where yawl traveling from? He was looking at me now sensing that I was the outsider. "Philadelphia". My wife jumped in again. "He took me away from home, I am not sure if I have forgiven him yet." They both started laughing at the same time. "Well you enjoy the fried turkey and the rest of your folk's cooking." He hardly looked at my driver's license or the papers for the rental. I could have given him a card with Donald Duck on it and he wouldn't have noticed. Then he must have remembered to give us a reason for stopping us: "Oh, and you all be careful, we want you to get home to your folks in one piece."  No ticket just a warning from the very nice sheriff. Forget the fact that I wasn't speeding any more than the rest of the cars in the flow of traffic that we were in.

Of course I know why he stopped us.  We had out of state plates on the rental, and we were...well... you know.

Me: You know we were profiled , right?  Wife: Yeah maybe, but he was so nice. 

I thought of that experience as I read about a case of racial profiling of a college professor in Dallas, Texas.

The sister believes she was profiled for walking while black and she wrote about her experience in the Dallas newspaper.

Well, as it turns out, there were cameras rolling on the patrol car dash-cam and  the police chief of the town  (Corinth, Texas) is now chirping that her officers have been vindicated because they were so... polite.

Please watch the video in the link  that I provided and you will see that the police officers were in fact very polite.

But here is the thing that I want my friends in the majority population to understand about this racial profiling thing: If you are stopping a black person just because they are black (I don't care how polite you are being) and you would have just passed a white person in a similar situation with a friendly waive, you are profiling them. It's really that simple. "Color aroused" racialist can be some of the most polite people on earth.

So yes, I agree with the professor, it's pretty messed up that you can't go on a jog in your neighborhood without two police officers approaching you in a marked police car to basically tell you to watch where you walk in the street.

“'When I saw the video, those officers were nothing but professional,” she said. “[The incident] just didn’t lend itself to racial profiling.

“If we didn’t have the video, these officers would have serious allegations against them," Walthall added. "It would be their word against hers. Every white officer that stops an African-American does not constitute racial profiling.”'

You are right about that chief, but every white police officer who stops a black person just because they happen to be black, is profiling. I don't care how damn polite they are.  

"The officers ask Bland for her ID, which she did not have but she gave her name and date of birth after insisting that she take the officers’ picture “for safety’s sake.” The policemen obliged her request.

Walthall said the officers were correct to ask for identification because Bland had committed a Class C misdemeanor by impeding traffic."

Yes, like I was speeding that day in Livonia, Louisiana.


*Pic from laprogressive.com


 

News or propaganda?

The Field Negro education series continues.

Tonight we share a post from someone from the majority population who feels that he recently had a "eureka moment" about  one of the major news networks in this country.


"This is my first diary and its going to be long. I’ve been mulling over something that happened to me for almost a week now, I thought I’d become less angry and disappointed, but I just can’t get over it. Fox News is destroying my family. You think I’m exaggerating; I’m not. Watching their decline is like watching my own decline when I was an addict. Except this time the drug is propaganda and lies.
First, a little background is necessary. I come from a fairly typical, conservative, middle-class Protestant family. (How they got stuck with a progressive, pagan, recovering addict daughter is a mystery to us all!). My dad worked for the government for about 30 years, for everybody’s favorite big brother, the NSA. He took early retirement and has a pension for the rest of his life. My mom does real estate – still – and never worked a full-time job after the kids were born. Typical white, privileged family who don’t know how incredibly lucky they are.

My parents, nevertheless, were decent people. Typical conservatives: unintentionally selfish and unaware of their privilege, but not bad people at heart. They were casually racist in what I considered a passive, mostly harmless way – by which I mean they considered themselves superior to people of color, but in spite of that underlying belief, they treated others kindly. They still tended to meet each individual as an individual, regardless of the person’s race.

(As an aside, I don’t actually believe any racism is harmless. I only mean I considered the attitude just a vestige of their upbringing in the pre-civil rights era and it didn’t seem to prevent them from treating everyone fairly. They were never hateful to persons of color, they were just sort of semi-consciously "superior.”)

Sorry for the long back-story, but its important for context about what upset me so much.
The details of the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Night below the orange Fox-scrambled brain:

Last week, I went over to my parent's house for dinner. It was the day of the Oregon school shooting. Fox News was on – Fox News is ALWAYS on.

I generally NEVER discuss politics with them anymore, not since the 2008 election, if I can possibly avoid it, because they have become more and more strident and less and less anchored in reality. But the tragedy of the Oregon shooting seemed uncontroversial to me so I made the mistake of saying, “It's so sad. Another school shooting. I read today it's the 45th mass shooting this year.”
Obama was on-screen giving his response at the time. And my father starts complaining that “he’s getting ready to say something bad, something about gun control.” And I'm surprised, I kind of sarcastically reply, “Yeah, and that's a CRAZY idea.” (Not terribly diplomatic of me).
My dad starts screaming, actually screaming, that “gun control won’t work because the criminals won’t follow the rules and will steal guns or buy them illegally.” That really irritated me after the 45th senseless shooting, so I replied, “I’ll bet you money this shooter legally acquired the gun he used.”

Well, that REALLY set him off. He starts screaming at the TV that he “hates that fucking n***r, he can't stand that man, he'd like to take a gun and shoot him in the head RIGHT NOW.”
Our president. Spoken by a lifelong civil servant.

I was speechless. Angry, disturbed, and very disappointed.

First of all, he’s not a gun person. He actually does own a gun - an antique rifle from my granddad. I don’t think that he’s ever shot a gun recreationally in his life. Secondly, my dad was never a yeller. Lastly, he worked for our government for 30 years, so expressing the desire to murder our democratically elected president, even hypothetically, seemed beyond the pale.

My mother chimes in that HER problem with him is that he’s a Muslim. Beyond the obvious fact that if you say you’re not a Muslim, you’re not (and how else could you prove it anyway?), it wouldn't matter if he was. I said to her “You have problem with him because you think he’s a bad president. It wouldn’t matter if he was Muslim if he was a good president, right?” – vainly trying to get her to base her objections on some kind of factual basis, however misguided.

She agrees, “Well, he’s not a good president!” I think we're getting somewhere here. I say, “OK! Then its NOT because he’s Muslim, its because you think he’s a bad president, right??”
“No, it’s because he’s a Muslim.” Well, alrighty then. Case closed.

The point of this long-winded rant is that THESE ARE NOT MY PARENTS. These are pod people. Hate-filled, fearful, bigoted, willfully ignorant pod people.

Their level of discourse, their understanding of the issues of the day has declined steadily over the years as they have watched Fox's daily propaganda. And their belief that they are the only ones who know the "real truth" has increased proportionately. Obviously, this has been exacerbated by a more virulent racism than I was aware of, but the tone of Fox “News” encourages and blesses latent racism and acts as a hothouse for it grow larger.

These are people who I used to have spirited but intelligent political discussions with. That’s gone now. Those people are gone.

In all other ways, they remain competent, functioning adults. My mom still works, they both are very computer-literate and active. Yet they believed that Dearborn, Michigan was under Sharia law. They believe that Planned Parenthood is selling baby parts for profit. They believe our President is a Kenyan Muslim Socialist.

Fox news IS propaganda, very dangerous propaganda. The harm it has done and continues to do cannot be overstated.

Thanks for listening. I just had to get this off my chest." [Source]

And I am glad that you did. I hope it helped.

*Pic from newscorpse.com