Showing posts with label ethnic relations. Show all posts
    Showing posts with label ethnic relations. Show all posts


  • Personally, I wouldn't be too bothered by any of this. Like so many others of his ilk, David Cameron's operating on a long-standing global narrative. That narrative requires national leaders to pay lip service to the Holocaust and the plight of the people who were forced to endure it, regardless of their actual sincerity. The global narrative says nothing about acknowledging the tremendous damage slavery has done throughout the world, especially when it concerns one of your former colonial holdings.

    Right about now, Cameron's probably wondering why couldn't Jamaica be a good little colony and not trouble the Crown with their nonsense. After all, it did its part by putting an end to what some Yanks called the "peculiar institution":

    Speaking to the Caribbean country’s parliament, the prime minister struck a defiant note as he spoke of his pride that Britain had played a part in abolishing the “abhorrent” trade, without highlighting its historic involvement in the transfer of slaves from west Africa and ownership of slaves in the Caribbean.

    He called for the two countries to “move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future”.

    To wit:

    “While there is indeed much to celebrate about our past, it would be wrong to do so while ignoring the most painful aspects of it – a period which should never be forgotten, and from which history has drawn the bitterest of lessons,” Cameron said.

    “Slavery was and is abhorrent in all its forms. It has no place whatsoever in any civilised society, and Britain is proud to have eventually led the way in its abolition.

    “That the Caribbean has emerged from the long shadow it cast is testament to the resilience and spirit of its people. I acknowledge that these wounds run very deep indeed. But I do hope that, as friends who have gone through so much together since those darkest of times, we can move on from this painful legacy and continue to build for the future.”

    Yours truly has always taken issue with victims being told they should move on and let bygones be bygones. I'd rather let the Jamaican people decide when to let the pain and anguish of slavery and its legacy go. After all, that's something that should be done on their own terms, not when someone else tells them to.

    There's a good reason why Cameron and the British government are so eager to push past slavery, whether the Jamaicans are ready to do so or not:

    A No 10 spokesman said Cameron told the Jamaican prime minister that the “longstanding position of the United Kingdom is that we do not believe reparations is the right approach”.

    Reparations has always been the solid brick wall that stops most attempts at righting both age-old and current wrongs cold in their tracks. While I'm not familiar with the countless losses suffered by the descendants of Jamaica's captive ancestors, I am very much familiar with those suffered by countless black Americans.

    The thought of cutting countless checks for past wrongs is something that turns the blood a lot of white Americans a bit chilly. Considering America's zero-sum view of societal spoils, many whites feel that balancing out the scales of justice in the form of reparations would take a sizable sum of the spoils right out of their pockets. In other words, they believe it would personally cost them dearly and further lower their socioeconomic standing. After all, who really wants to see uppity Negros bettering themselves through the spoils that were wrenched out of the hands of hard-working white men and women?

    But it's more than that. If the Powers That Be™ were forced to make a concerted effort to recompense those who have suffered most from slavery and all of its aftereffects, including the institutions it created to manage black ambition and extract black wealth, it would likely put the whole idea of America (or Great Britain) as a bastion of liberty and its very principles in question. Such an inward look, let alone an actual acknowledgement or even movement to correct past wrongs, would shake the nation to its core and likely cause a loss of identity and an existential crisis among much of its citizenry. It may even provoke a last-gasp backlash conjured from deep within the very soul of the nation, akin to a demon's final torrent of fury and rage before being finally vanquished once and for all.

    For this and other reasons, it's likely that the British people and the Powers That Be™ at 10 Downing Street would rather ignore the monumental debt owed to the Jamaican people and others who've suffered deprivation at the hands of slavery and colonialism and let the gentle erosion of time itself scrub away the debt until it becomes unrecognizable to all. Hence the forgive and forget posture taken by Cameron and countless others.

    However, time doesn't heal all wounds. Some wounds tend to fester until they've been properly tended to. Otherwise, the noisome sore becomes the gangrenous tissue that threatens to destroy the patient. So David Cameron and others like him can continue to ignore the issue and hope it goes away on its own, but only to their everlasting peril.



  • A few weeks ago, I wanted to make a compare/contrast between how authorities were handling the Oregon standoff led by Ammon Bundy and the standoff led by members of MOVE. I wound up not doing it not only because reading and researching what happened on May 13, 1985 angered me in a way very few things do, but because I knew people would point out there wasn't a direct connection. Whereas the so-called "showdown" at the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge involved federal authorities (most notably the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service), the MOVE bombing involved the Philadelphia Police Department (and with the blessing of Philadelphia's first black mayor, Wilson Goode).

    Nevertheless, the two events provide yet another stark contrast as to how authorities throughout the nation deal with perceived threats. Whereas Philly's finest elected to use extraordinary force when dealing with MOVE, resulting in 11 dead, 65 houses destroyed and over 250 people rendered homeless, the feds chose to wait out the Oregon standoff, only using the absolute minimum amount of force when left with no other choice.

    It's no secret that authorities often choose to ratchet up the force continuum faster when dealing with black individuals and black groups, but where they start out on the force continuum is often higher than where their white peers start out. In other words, LEOs have proven to not just escalate faster and with more force when dealing with black suspects, but also hold them with a higher level of suspicion to begin with.

    In short:



    It's true that the feds were feeling (and still feel) gun-shy about how to handle standoffs in the wake of Ruby Ridge and Waco, but the leniency of which the self-described militiamen at the heart of the event were treated still rankles the nerves of every black person who knew that a black group conducting itself under the same circumstances would not get the same courtesy.


  • Our country's national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob.
    - Ida. B Wells

    Throughout our nation's history, bigotry against black Americans, the dreaded Other, has always been enforced through a number of means. Whenever institutional, state-sanctioned methods of bigotry and discrimination failed to achieve the desired results, it was left to the white mobs to enforce bigotry through violence. Time and time again, seemingly decent, God-fearing American men and women would transform themselves into a hateful, virulent force bent on protecting the ideals of white supremacy by violently and publicly destroying a few black bodies, regardless of innocence or guilt and with the quiet sanction of law enforcement seemingly rendered impotent in the face of a spontaneous and unruly force.

    Mob-led lynchings were the preferred means of educating the black populace on where they lay on the societal totem pole through terror and violence. After all, there's nothing scarier than seeing dozens of angry white faces drag off a single black soul in the middle of the night in preparation for a public, hands-on exhibit on the dangers of being an affront to whitekind, for whatever reason.


    These days, the hands-on lynching of old has fallen along the wayside in favor of more high-tech means. Nevertheless, there are those out there who still believe that the old ways are still best.



    Nathan Ener's rant against the New Black Panther Party, the Black Lives Matter movement and those he sees as "black thugs" comes in the aftermath of the unfortunate death of Texas sheriff's Deputy Darren Goforth and his killer, Shannon Miles, being found incompetent to stand trial for his murder. At this point, a white mob would have gladly stepped in to deliver the sort of "justice" they thought was denied to them and the rest of whitekind, but you'd have to get them fired up about it first. And that's where the above rant comes into play.

    Stirring up deep-set indignation and fear over the dreaded Other running roughshod over God-fearing white men, women and children has always been part of the recipe for inciting white mob violence. The death of a white person (or at least rumors of white deaths) serves as its explosive catalyst. Had this event happened in 1915 instead of 2015, it's very likely that Shannon Miles' corpse, shredded from head-to-toe, would be hanging from some forlorn oak somewhere as a shining symbol of mob-delivered justice - and as a warning to any black American who'd even harbor thoughts about harming the hair on a white person's head.

    It's not beyond the pale to wonder if, given the right circumstances, someone like Nathan Ener would gladly lead the way.


    Yours truly would have written off Ener as your typical bigot, something of which East Texas has in spades, if it weren't for a rather disturbing link to another case where a young black man by the name of Alfred Wright was found murdered. According to authorities, Wright died of a drug overdose shortly after a deal involving 28-year-old Shane Hadnot. But it was the manner in which he was found dead that brought a great deal of suspicion:

    Wright's body was disfigured when he was found Nov. 25, 2013, which led his family to suspect foul play.

    His sister Annilia Wright-Mosley said her brother's tongue was cut out, eyes gouged out, throat slit and ear cut off. He was also missing teeth and fingernails, which are signs of violence and torture, she said.

    Wright's family believes Alfred was tortured and brutally murdered and has called Hadnot a "scapegoat" in the case.

    The authorities wrote off those allegations by citing how the damages were likely caused by scavenging animals.

    So what's Nathan Ener's link to all of this? Here's Ener squaring off with black rights activist and New Black Panther Party leader Quanell X.



    “I know why you’re upset. You’re upset because of Ashley,” Quanell X taunted Ener as they met in the street. “’Cause your daughter likes black coffee, no sugar no cream. That’s why you’re upset. It’s eating you up, ain’t it? That she likes a black man?”

    Ener called to a white man on the sidewalk.
    “Ben, does any of my people—any of my family like black folks?”

    “Not that I know of.”

    Quanell X goaded Ener: “Ashley does! Ashley does! Now let me tell you something, peckerwood. I will whup your ass. I’m that one.” He peeled off his suit jacket, stepped up inches from Ener’s face, and the two jawed to the crowd’s amusement. A line of uniformed troopers filed out of the county building and led Ener away.

    It's likely that not only was Nathan Ener's own daughter might have been romantically involved with Wright, but also that her father told her he knew what really happened to him:


    Nathan Ener Should take a Polygraph here is PROOF he told his daughter Ashley Ener he knew what happened to my brother Alfred Wright.
    Posted by Annilia Wright-Mosley on Friday, February 28, 2014


    The plot thickens.

    Wright may have also been romantically involved with Cindy Maddox, daughter of Sheriff Tom Maddox. The same guy who complained bitterly that he was missing out on a good day's hunt by searching for Wright.

    Now you'd have to wonder if this was what Alfred Wright was really murdered for. In many unspoken parts of the nation, consorting with white women is the highest unspeakable offense for a black man to commit. In some cases, it could lead directly to his death.

    You also have to wonder if Nathan Ener had anything to do with Wright's death. Town gossip being what it is, it's likely that some tightly-held secrets are bound to come spilling out at some point.

    A mob is a great way for an evil to be committed without any of that pesky responsibility or guilt assigned to you. But it doesn't take a mob to commit evil. Sometimes, it only takes one or two individuals to get the job done.

  • Yours truly has learned something these past few months watching and reading up on current events, especially those affecting black Americans:

    1. The value of a black life in the United States remains marginal, at best. At worst, that value is nonexistent.
    2. At any given moment, said life can be put to an end at the whim of a white American, whether under color of law or as a concerned citizen who "feared" for their safety and well-being.
    3. The value of a black life in the United States is determined and enshrined by mainstream America's view of the black community, and then verified and validated in its treatment at the hands of law enforcement and other institutions throughout the nation.
    4. Said law enforcement members have been given card blanche to respond to the black community and other ethnic and social minority groups as aggressively as possible.
    5. Respectability politics has long since proven to be absolutely ineffective in improving the black community's image in mainstream America's eyes or preventing further life-ending incidents at the hands of law enforcement and concerned citizens.
    6. When confronted with the above, many mainstream Americans will resort to blaming the black community for these problems based on a strict adherence to the Just World fallacy and their belief of black Americans as a morally bankrupt people. They'll also support law enforcement officials and concerned citizens who've put black lives to rest, at least as far as polite society will allow.
    7. Overt racism is still taboo and a serious faux pas in polite discussion. However, coded talk remains perfectly acceptable and preferred among many.

    The entire black blogosphere has undergone an airing out of grievances and a sharing of thoughts, feelings, experiences and the pain suffered by many within the black community. There have been protests, marches, demonstrations, the works. There have been a few indictments and even a few cases where authorities have quickly acted, if only out of self-interest and self-preservation.

    Still, the killings and the beatings continue.

    Michael Brown, Tamir Rice, Oscar Grant, Eric Garner, Rekia Boyd, Aiyana Stanley-Jones - the list goes on. And it's one that grows longer with each passing day.

  • Another day, another dead black American, another outrage.

    These days, black Americans are being murdered like clockwork by men and women charged with protecting the public. Except protecting and serving the public takes a back seat to a whole host of corrupt behaviors, none least the brutalization and wanton murder of black individuals.

    Judging by history, these things are to be expected. Bigotry against the dreaded Other has always been iron-clad policy, even in today's so-called "post-racial" environment. Institutional enforcement of said bigotry has also been de rigueur, especially when fears of being overrun by said Other has always lurked in the back of mainstream America's collective mind since colonial times.

    So Freddie Gray's death at the hands of the Baltimore Police Department is, in history's grand scope, nothing out of the ordinary. The only remarkable thing about it is the reaction it elicited from the city's black residents.


    And even that response doesn't seem out of the ordinary. Protests and demonstrations have been the default method of expressing outrage by a people who feel otherwise powerless to prevent these atrocities from happening, The attendant rioting and looting is another side of that response, mostly done by those whose sheer anger and fury explode into a whirlwind of fire and shattered glass, interspersed with opportunists in search of a quick profit from chaos.

    Mainstream America has always looked at these displays with a bit of bemusement, especially when burned-out businesses and overturned cars come into focus. If anything, these displays are treated as proof positive of law enforcement's raison d'etre - to prevent so-called lawless elements from initiating these displays in the first place.

    So it's not out of the ordinary for a white American to see a phalanx of police officers in full riot gear facing down a lone demonstrator and dismissing the entire thing as the taxpaying public getting it's money's worth. In a way, they would be absolutely correct.

    It's also not out of the ordinary for the mainstream American media to write off the entire exercise as just another mass exhibition of black America's latent criminality. Acknowledging the unreconstructed public's confirmation bias happens to be a great way of raising viewership, even if it's at the expense of a people who suffer day in and day out.

    It's no wonder that mainstream American media outlets are more interested in slow-panning property damage and opportunists with stolen goods in hand. It's those sort of things that make for good ratings and even better outrage porn among unreconstructed minds.


    There's no arguing that Freddie Gray in no way deserved what happened to him. No human being deserves to be brutalized to the point of paralysis, coma and eventual death. There's never an excuse for it and there never will be.

    Regardless, what happened to Freddie Gray is just one of a long, depressing and seemingly unending line of atrocities committed mainly by law enforcement officials throughout the U.S., with the occasional "concerned citizen" or vigilante delivering a helping hand*. The slave patrols, "heroic" klansmen and angry mobs of "respectable Christian" whites might not be taking part in these modern-day tragedies, but their spirit remains in full effect.

    * As seen in the murder of Trayvon Martin

  • - Alternet's Sam Adler-Bell interviews Robin DiAngelo on the concept of "white fragility" and how terms like "white privilege" and "entitlement" are losing their effectiveness in the white mindspace. Witness DiAngelo succinctly explain the origins of white fragility and how feelings of superiority are cultivated in the first place:

    RD: Exactly. And white fragility also comes from a deep sense of entitlement. Think about it like this: from the time I opened my eyes, I have been told that as a white person, I am superior to people of color. There’s never been a space in which I have not been receiving that message. From what hospital I was allowed to be born in, to how my mother was treated by the staff, to who owned the hospital, to who cleaned the rooms and took out the garbage. We are born into a racial hierarchy, and every interaction with media and culture confirms it—our sense that, at a fundamental level, we are superior.

    And, the thing is, it feels good. Even though it contradicts our most basic principles and values. So we know it, but we can never admit it. It creates this kind of dangerous internal stew that gets enacted externally in our interactions with people of color, and is crazy-making for people of color. We have set the world up to preserve that internal sense of superiority and also resist challenges to it. All while denying that anything is going on and insisting that race is meaningless to us.

    One of the best quotes in the interview, IMHO.

    - Strong Towns has a series of articles on American suburbia as a glorified ponzi scheme and the growing costs of maintaining this far-flung infrastructure. Yours truly will hopefully have a post on gentrification and suburbia's changing demographics later on.

    - In post-racial America, blatant, naked discrimination takes more subtle, insidious forms. For instance, Mother Jones' Marc Bookman shows how virulent racism affects how the gears of the justice system turns for minorities. To wit:

    ...nearly eight years after Kenneth Fults was sentenced to death for kidnapping and murdering his neighbor Cathy Bounds in Spalding County, Georgia, one of the trial jurors made a startling admission under oath: He'd voted for the death penalty, he said, because "that's what that nigger deserved."

    In 2005, a former prosecutor in Texas revealed that her superiors had instructed her, if she wanted to strike a black juror, to falsely claim that she'd seen the person sleeping. This was just a dressed-up version of the Dallas prosecution training manual from 1963, which directed assistant district attorneys to "not take Jews, Negroes, Dagos, Mexicans, or a member of any minority race on a jury, no matter how rich or how well educated."

    As the clock wound down on Osborne's appeals, a former US attorney general, a former Georgia chief justice, and former President Jimmy Carter (previously the governor of Georgia) all spoke out against the execution. They had heard the allegation by another one of Mostiler's clients, a white man named Gerald Huey, that Mostiler had told him, speaking of Osborne, that "that little nigger deserves the chair."

    a transcript from the trial of Derrick Middlebrooks, a black defendant who was so troubled by the racist talk that he asked the judge to dismiss Mostiler as his public defender: "He indicated to me that he wouldn't—he couldn't go up there among them niggers because them niggers would kill him," Middlebrooks said. "Now personally I don't know if he meant anything really by it. But I find it, you know, kind of hard to have an attorney to represent me when he uses those type of words. It doesn't help my confidence in my attorney."

    This is nothing new, aside from the fact that things like these are being aired out for all the world to see.

    - Gawker's David Graeber talks about Ferguson and how a perfect storm of institutional racism and policing for profit has culminated into a system that essentially harvests its own captive citizenry while keeping them locked in a permanent state of underclassdom.

    - Abagond talks about segregation academies and their legacy. A few of the commentators are also discussing how integration has possibly done more harm than good for the black community (which is something I'll talk about at a later date, as well).





  • There's a lot I could say about this. Like how racism is far from dead and will likely never die. Or how many corners of mainstream society still harbor prejudicial thoughts about minorities, but at least have the decency to keep them out of earshot of polite society. Or how an organization founded in the very heart of the Confederacy in antebellum times still perpetuates the same attitudes and beliefs that were present at the time of its foundation.

    I could talk about all of that. Instead, I'll just pull a quote from a segment of Larry Wilmore's Comedy Central show, The Nightly Show:

    “They also kicked the fraternity off campus, so don’t worry, you won’t be seeing any more of those frat boys - until they’re your congressmen.”

    Imagine all the crazy shenanigans Trent Lott got up to during his time in Sigma Nu, except no one thought enough to capture it all on Double 8 film.

    And that's the thing. No matter what the University of Oklahoma does to people like Parker Rice, these guys will inevitably land in places and positions of power and prestige, where their actions and beliefs will invariably shape and mold the processes and systems our society deals with on a regular basis.

    Could you imagine Parker Rice on a Senate subcommittee deciding the fate of an education or healthcare initiative? I can and it's a scary feeling.

    So while everyone pats SAE and OU on the back for performing the damage control required of them by their PR departments, keep in mind that you might be seeing some of these people again in another 10 or 15 years. I suggest you start jotting down names and committing them to memory.

  • In light of all that's happened in the past year, all the lives unnecessarily lost and the unhinged hatred put on display thus far, one has to wonder what would the iconic civil rights leader would have to say about it all?

    We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.

    And it's something that a lot of people, including the very officers tasked with protecting and serving the citizenry, are having exceptional trouble grasping.

    But America's obligation to the Negro has been, for lack of better words, wanting:

    Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

    But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize a shameful condition.

    That "shameful condition" that existed at the time Dr. King uttered the above still exists, and not on part of the Negro, as many would gleefully claim.

    Just a little food for thought on this MLK day.

    Previous posts:

  • In any case where a young person of color has been beaten, shot and/or killed at the hands of law enforcement, there are inevitably two competing narratives: one where the victim is described by parents, family and friends in the most positive and loving light as possible and one where the victim is reduced to that of either a mere criminal or a potential criminal.

    Prior to Michael Brown's fatal encounter with Ferguson P.D. Officer Darren Wilson, Brown was featured on surveillance camera at a nearby convenience store, where it appeared that he was involved in a strong-arm robbery. The events, as they unfolded on-screen, fed into the "Michael Brown is a Criminal" narrative trotted by CNN and many other mainstream news outlets. It also gave many with an already-low opinion of Brown and black Americans like him all the justification necessary to consider his life forfeit at the hands of Wilson. In other words, to say that Michael Brown deserved to die, but without actually uttering those words.

    Narratives are a powerful thing. They can easily influence how Americans think or feel about an issue and sway opinion from one end to another. The pictures and footage of 1960s-era civil rights advocates suffering assault after ruthless assault at the hands of a cultural and state apparatus intent on status-quo preservation created a powerful narrative that swayed many on the side of justice. But even that narrative had to compete with the equally powerful narrative firmly codified by D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation and ruthlessly reinforced by the behaviors and actions of both cultural and state actors.

    Painting Michael Brown as a deadly giant of a criminal wipes any sympathy that anyone has for what happened to him that fateful day. It encourages a mindset that figures, "he was a natural-born criminal and he had it coming. He deserved to die."

    He didn't deserve to die, but that's all academic at this point.

    As it turned out, he did pay for what he was suspected by many of stealing. But I suppose that's also academic at this point, too.


    Michael Brown's designated status as a deadly giant and a vicious beast is nothing new. Trayvon Martin was described by many in the media and elsewhere as a powerful Uber-Negro with innate MMA training and the capacity to destroy innocent lives by sheer force of his own blackness, nevermind his actual physical appearance. The powerful narrative of the black man as a superhuman beast is a common one, carefully cultivated over the centuries as proof of his suitability and destiny in the fields of the planter class.

    Sheena C. Howard's Huffington Post piece goes into detail about this powerful and long-lasting narrative and how it's shaped this country's perception of black men and women. By highlighting this prolific and persistent pathology, it's easy to understand why the American public is both in awe and in fear of the black specimen:

    During the Reconstruction Period (1866 -- 1877), many Whites argued that free Blacks were a danger to society because they were animalistic beasts and savages that needed to be tamed by White slave owners. In 1901, the writer, George T. Winston stated, "The black brute is lurking in the dark, a monstrous beast, crazed with lust. His ferocity is almost demoniacal. A mad bull or tiger could scarcely be more brutal. A whole community is frenzied with horror, with the blind and furious rage for vengeance". These sentiments are eerily consistent with the ways in which Officer Darren Wilson describes Mike Brown as a "demon" in his testimony.

    Since the 1930's scientists have been trying to generate evidence of superhuman physical features that characterize Black people to explain their exemplary success in sports. The century old-debate of the "slave gene" seems to resurface every four years, particularly when athletes of African descent outperform competitors at the Olympics, -- most notably in track and field.

    The supposedly untamable, animalistic nature of the black man justifies mainstream America's fear of him while, at the same time, justifying his return to his proper lot in life (under the watchful eye of the slave holder). It also justifies dealing with the so-called superhuman in the most final manner possible. So instead of merely talking a man out of wielding his weapon or spending minutes ordering him to surrender peacefully, law enforcement officers are expected to respond to the dire life-or-death presence of the superhuman Negro by ending said Negro's existence, full stop.

    America's pathological obsession and fear of black men, a current that runs deeply underneath the national bedrock, was useful as a way to destroy any sympathy for the black creature as he was used and abused on the farms and plantations. It remained useful for severing any sense of solidarity between poor freed blacks and their equally impoverished white counterparts, while keeping the rest of America in fear of their mere presence. And today, it's used as an effective narrative to continue justifying the actions and tactics of law enforcement agencies throughout the nation, as well as the corrupt actions of the prosecutors and the judiciary.

    Sadly, enforcing that narrative always comes at a cost. For Michael Brown's family, it cost them their son. For black families across the U.S., it cost them their peace of mind and sense of justice. For America, the cost is its morals and, as some would say, its soul.


  • Michael Brown's death and the subsequent protests in the city of Ferguson, Missouri have laid bare a few simple, troubling facts about living in this country as a black American:

    1. You are always considered a danger or a threat until proven otherwise.
    2. As a possible threat, you are subject to the wishes and whims of law enforcement, the courts and the penal system.
    3. Even ordinary citizens can deal with you as they see fit if they consider you a threat, as codified in both de facto and de jure forms.
    The above has had an effect on how the black community sees and deals with law enforcement, as highlighted in Ta-Nehisi Coates' latest piece. When you know the police are more likely to see you as a threat rather than as a person in need, you're less likely to want to interact with them in any way, shape or form. Out of necessity, community-driven self-policing becomes the norm.

    But the reason for LEO insistence on treating black Americans as a clear and present danger has little to do with criminal stats or personal experiences - those are often used as pretextual justifications for their behavior. Instead, it's a bit deeper than that:

    The police departments of America are endowed by the state with dominion over your body. I came home at the end of this summer to find that dominion had been. This summer in Ferguson and Staten Island we have seen that dominion employed to the maximum ends—destruction of the body. This is neither new nor extraordinary. It does not matter if the destruction of your body was an overreaction. It does not matter if the destruction of your body resulted from a misunderstanding. It does not matter if the destruction of your body springs from foolish policy. Sell cigarettes without proper authority and your body can be destroyed. Resent the people trying to entrap your body and it can be be destroyed. Protect the home of your mother and your body can be destroyed. Visit the home of your young daughter and your body will be destroyed. The destroyers of your body will rarely be held accountable. Mostly they will receive pensions.

    Ownership of and authority over the black body is something that stretches as far back as the beginning of the slave trade, when the purchase and use of involuntary African labor came into vogue. It was most apparent during the heyday of the plantation system, with the southern planter class and their allies in control of black labor and black movement. The black body was theirs to do as they saw fit.

    This attitude did not vanish once the plantation system - at least in its slavery-supported form - vanished. The loss of control over the black body also meant a grievous economic loss. When black Americans began taking advantage of the Reconstruction period, there was a realization that this loss of control could be permanent. The fight against Reconstruction, the imposition of Jim Crow laws throughout the south and the use of those laws to create a new prison-supported plantation system marked the re-imposition of control over the black body.

    Today, mainstream America struggles to maintain authority over the black body, to do as they see fit with it. Even if it means warehousing your body in a secure facility for decades on end. Or bruising your body to the point of disfigurement and paralysis. Or simply destroying your body outright.

    It doesn't take a united organization to exercise that sort of control over the black body. Such tasks are often outsourced to ordinary individuals - people who have their own agendas, but nevertheless inherently understand the need for policing the black body. Jason Zimmerman did his part to re-impose societal control over the black body - he understood clearly what society subconsciously asked of him once he saw those black teenagers behaving in a way that suggested a lack of control.

    LEO behavior in Ferguson, L.A., N.Y.C. and points elsewhere are part and parcel with the continuing need to control the black body, whether for the benefit of the scared white suburbanite, the unrepentant Lost Causer, the workaday man or woman who doesn't want to lose their job or home to "those people," the businessmen who see black bodies as a goldmine of dependable cheap labor or the politician who uses black bodies as a "tough on crime" liferaft to keep his or her career afloat.

    Control of the black body has always been good for business and good for society. Yours truly doesn't expect that to stop anytime soon.

  • It's been established throughout history that there's nothing scarier to many Americans than the sight of a black man with a gun, let alone a large group of black men armed to the teeth.

    In light of Michael Brown's death at the hands of an overzealous police department in a racially charged tinderbox of a town, it looks like I'll have to amend that, as follows:

    It's been established throughout history that there's nothing scarier to many Americans than the sight of a black man.

    Of course, it's not so much "fear" than it is an ingrown, almost reflexive need for "control." Today's highly-militarized law enforcement are the runaway slave patrols of the new millennium - if they're not busy funneling a growing number of able-bodied black men and women into the prison-industrial complex and the permanent underclassery that it entails, they're busy with displays like these.Walking around in full military-surplus gear. Firing tear gas into private homes. Aiming AR-15s at innocent passersby.

    Make no mistake: this is state-sanctioned terrorism. It's something black America has long since been intimately acquainted with, from the moment the first batch of African slaves were dragged off the boat.

    Throughout slavery.

    After Reconstruction.

    During the Jim Crow era.

    During the Civil Rights era.

    During the so-called era of "colorblindness" and "post-racial America."

    Up to today.

    And yes, there are people out there who not only support this state-sanctioned terrorism of black souls (because they're assumed to be criminals who probably definitely deserve it), but they revel in it.





    It's a small taste of the shit sandwich black America has had to deal with for generations on end. And there's no end to it in sight.

    This and other acts of state-sanctioned terrorism is a cancer. This is the cancer that is slowly but surely killing this nation. It metastasized early on, up to the sloppy and life-threatening surgery that was the American Civil War. It went into remission with Reconstruction, but flared up in its full glory with Jim Crow. Chemotherapy came in the form of the Civil Rights movement and after that, everyone thought it would finally stay in remission and eventually disappear.

    But like any virulent cancer, it never leaves. It just bides its time until the conditions are right to spread. And spread, it has. And it keeps spreading.

    The cancer won't go away until America is finally ready to acknowledge that black life has the same worth as a white life, and that a black life deserves just as much protection. Until then, this country will remain in hospice, slowly awaiting the day when the cancer swallows it whole.



    Tell us something we don't know.

  • NOTE: The following was originally posted on July 7, 2012. For further food for thought, here's Dave Zirin's repost of Frederick Douglass's famous speech "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?"

     On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress issued the Declaration of Independence, a document that declared the 13 colonies under the control of and at war with Great Britain to be independent entities. Within the document's Preamble is the following phrase:

    We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

    Please note that at the time, these unalienable Rights were reserved only for the white male inhabitants of this burgeoning nation. Woman and African slaves were not afforded many, if any of the rights outlined here.

    In 1789, the Articles of Confederation were replaced with what would be known as the United States Constitution. This document set the tone for law and order throughout the entire young nation. Once again, the rights defined in this document were reserved only for the white male inhabitants of this nation. Women and African slaves were not afforded many, if any of the rights outlined here.

    The founding fathers' failure to put paid to the question of whether a country should actually declare itself a genuine symbol of freedom when it was willing to quietly tolerate and ignore the subjugation and enslavement of millions of people in its own borders eventually led to the American Civil War, in which the southern states sought to secede to protect their interest in the "peculiar institution," among other reasons. In 1863, President Abraham Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation, an executive order calling for the freedom of nearly 3.1 million slaves within the Confederate states. Approximately 50,000 were immediately set free, with more to come as Union troops made short work of Confederate forces.

    Lincoln's gesture is sometimes seen as magnanimous, but it was more a tactical maneuver designed to deprive Confederate forces of their readily available pool of manual labor and a potential source of "volunteers" to draft into service. As Lincoln said himself in his August 1862 letter to Horace Greeley:

    If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. . . . I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men everywhere could be free.

    Lincoln's first and foremost goal was to save the Union. Whether he realized that this action, along with the eventual defeat of the Confederacy in 1865 would sew the seeds of resentment, revenge and low-level retribution in the Deep South would remain uncertain, as he didn't live long enough to see any of that.

    Hopscotching over the Black Codes, Jim Crow, Separate but Equal, the Civil Rights Movement and the pubic hair on Clarence Thomas' Coke can, we come to Chris Rock, whose Fourth of July tweet upset the delicate sensibilities of many Independence Day celebrators:



    Yep, this is what got him yelled at throughout the Internet and Twitter. Maybe he should have let Louis C.K. or some other white American comic "unironically" fire this one off.

    Look at it this way -- during the first 89 years or so of this country's official existence, black Americans had little, if nothing to celebrate about. Most were enslaved and the scant few fortunate enough to buy their freedom could not enjoy it as their white counterparts could. For at least a hundred years afterwards, black Americans were officially second-class citizens, denied the full and unalienable rights given to their white counterparts (which now included white women). Today, efforts continue to remind black Americans that even though a guy who mostly looks like them is now the President, their black asses are still not deemed worthy of the unalienable rights they fought and died to get and to enjoy.*

    For the past 188 years or so, that part in the Preamble of the Declaration of Independence was, as far as blacks were concerned, a lie. And yet people still expect black Americans to suck it up, put on their patriotic faces and wave those flags around like good Americans. People expect the same of the native Americans, nevermind how the U.S., for all intents and purposes, ethnically cleansed tribe after tribe, leaving mere remnants to drink themselves into depression and death on the reservations. If someone did that to your people, it'd probably drive you to drink, too.

    Black Americans have more to celebrate about Juneteenth than Independence Day. Too bad everyone tends to forget about Juneteenth. As Ta-Nehisi Coates once mentioned, everything surrounding the American Civil War is treated as a series of tragic events, at least outside of Confederate war re-enactments and antebellum society balls. Actually celebrating Juneteenth the same way we do the Fourth of July is more or less a breach of established decorum -- everything has to be Ken Burns-grade somber, like visiting the grave of an old friend. You wouldn't dance on your old friends grave...unless you hated him, right?

    Perceived hatred. That's another thing that annoys me about the bitching that comes when black Americans speak up and speak out. Chris Rock's tweet was immediately construed as some sort of hatred for the Fourth of July and consequently, a hatred of white people and America. How the hell does that happen?

    Apparently, unless black Americans remain in the role of white America's best (black) friend, offering only flattery, positive advice and a shoulder to lean on when they're not busy making white America look good, blacks are immediately assumed to harbor some sort of deep-seated hatred for white folk. It's almost as though it speaks to an innate fear that practically every white American has had since one of their forefathers came up with the idea of bringing black slaves onto the country: a sudden and swift revenge riot that ends with countless white heads on sticks and countless white women claimed as trophies. White America's been waiting for a "payback/revenge" plot** that most likely will never materialize. We've proven we're much better than that.

    A lot of people don't want to hear the truth, especially when it comes to this country's screwed-up ethnic relations. Chris Rock tweeted an uncomfortable truth and many of us proved we couldn't handle it. We have to do something about that and it doesn't include shouting a great comedian into silence.☨ Maybe we should give that whole "unalienable rights" thing another go, this time, for all Americans, no matter their ethnicity.

    * These days, even the white men and women whom were guaranteed these unalienable rights are losing them, bit by bit.
    ** If some of these folks started listening to James Brown's "The Payback," they'd probably get the wrong idea and piss themselves in a fit of conspiracy theorizing.
    ☨ Because if there's something that's practically impossible, it's shouting down a great comedian.

  • I followed the Donald Sterling story, but I haven't had much of an inclination to blog about it as deeply as I'd like to. As I've said before, there has to be something about the subject matter that really piques my interest before I invest the time and effort to make an in-depth post I feel is worthy of DDSS. Not exactly the most efficient way to run a one-man show, but there it is.

    So the fact that a rich old man who has already established himself as quite the consummate scumbag was caught on tape in the full throes of grizzled, disgruntled bigotry wasn't of much interest to me. The fact that he did all of this in fear of his paramour embracing her roots and the men comprising much of those roots wasn't all that interesting, either. Nevertheless, it's amazing how jealousy, insecurity and paranoia has the potential to render the brain into a twisted, broken mess.

    The reactions were mildly interesting. I never expected the Clippers to stage a walk-off or simply refuse to not play at all, but I did find the protest they came up with a bit weak. You can turn your warm-up jerseys inside out as much as you want, but you're still on the court playing for a team owned by a man who likely sees you the same way Simon Legree saw his own charges. I understand it's all about the paper at the end of the day, but still...

    Seeing ESPN drop the ball by not picking it up in the first place was no surprise, either. The media gossip mavens at TMZ did a bang-up job getting the story out there and the bloggers (with yours truly as an exception) ran marathons with it. Meanwhile, ESPN appeared too scared to report anything about Sterling until they've received the proper clearance and narrative from whomever was higher up on the media food chain.

    Seeing Sterling bounced out of the NBA and, as a result, forced to relinquish Clippers ownership was a surprise. I've come to expect misbehaving millionaires and billionaires to be given slaps on the wrist, golden parachutes and generous retirement packages, so Sterling's forced exit from the league was a bit out of the ordinary and a refreshing shock for a cynic like myself.

    The best thing about all of this? The man's mouth and actions along with the subsequent exposure were what got him the boot from basketball.

    When dealing with the likes of Sterling, Cliven Bundy and Rand Paul, it's best to let ignorance speak for itself. As our own president remarked during his trip to Kuala Lumpur at the height of the controversy, letting your adversary make a mockery of their own self through their own words and actions is a far more effective tool than anything else you could muster. Had Sterling possessed the forethought to hide his ignorance better, he'd still be in the good graces of the NBA.


    In the end, the only interesting angle in this entire story is the one that nobody else is really talking about - the fact that a league where 76.3 percent of its players and 43.3 percent of its head coaches are black, over 98 percent of the majority team owners are white. It's a bit of a problem (and it gives us plenty of unpleasant imagery to work with), but it's one that'll have to slowly work itself out as more black American entrepreneurs realize their full economic clout and make the smart moves with their money. Is owning an NBA franchise a smart move? That depends on what you want out of it, but that's not a department that yours truly specializes in.

    "But Mack, wouldn't it be a problem if 76.3 percent of those NBA players were white and 98 percent of the majority owners where black?"

    Good question. Advocates of a colorblind and post-racial America will likely suggest that just as long as the ownership treats their players good, there wouldn't and shouldn't be any problems at all, thus making white majority ownership of a team full of black players a non-issue. With that logic, there shouldn't be problem the other way around, either.

    On the other hand, there's that unpleasant imagery to deal with. It's imagery brought to us by generations of bad history, but that's something that anyone with the time and inclination can look up for themselves.

  • Ever since the ink dried on the idea that maybe, just maybe that America's non-majority members have been getting a bit of a raw deal from their culturally hegemonic counterparts, there's been a major degree of pushback. Most noticeable is the pushback against white Americans not only coming face-to-face with their own privilege, but also the feeling that they're being made to apologize profusely for it at gunpoint.

    And that's where young, bright-eyed Princeton student Tal Fortgang comes in. In a recent Time article, he laments the assumption that he, as a young white male in a society where being a white male is widely considered "de rigueur," benefits from such a privilege. To counteract said assumptions, he outlines the various struggles his family endured in order to attain their very own piece of the American Dream for themselves and their offspring:
    Perhaps it’s the privilege my grandfather and his brother had to flee their home as teenagers when the Nazis invaded Poland, leaving their mother and five younger siblings behind, running and running until they reached a Displaced Persons camp in Siberia, where they would do years of hard labor in the bitter cold until World War II ended. Maybe it was the privilege my grandfather had of taking on the local Rabbi’s work in that DP camp, telling him that the spiritual leader shouldn’t do hard work, but should save his energy to pass Jewish tradition along to those who might survive. Perhaps it was the privilege my great-grandmother and those five great-aunts and uncles I never knew had of being shot into an open grave outside their hometown. Maybe that’s my privilege.

    Or maybe it’s the privilege my grandmother had of spending weeks upon weeks on a death march through Polish forests in subzero temperatures, one of just a handful to survive, only to be put in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp where she would have died but for the Allied forces who liberated her and helped her regain her health when her weight dwindled to barely 80 pounds.

    Perhaps my privilege is that those two resilient individuals came to America with no money and no English, obtained citizenship, learned the language and met each other; that my grandfather started a humble wicker basket business with nothing but long hours, an idea, and an iron will—to paraphrase the man I never met: “I escaped Hitler. Some business troubles are going to ruin me?” Maybe my privilege is that they worked hard enough to raise four children, and to send them to Jewish day school and eventually City College.

    Perhaps it was my privilege that my own father worked hard enough in City College to earn a spot at a top graduate school, got a good job, and for 25 years got up well before the crack of dawn, sacrificing precious time he wanted to spend with those he valued most—his wife and kids—to earn that living. I can say with certainty there was no legacy involved in any of his accomplishments. The wicker business just isn’t that influential. Now would you say that we’ve been really privileged? That our success has been gift-wrapped?
    Tal Fortgang: good kid, great head on his shoulders, but he's a Star Wars stormtrooper shooting at Jedi here. The kid is missing the point, but how? Well, let's start with what wheatdogg over at Little Green Footballs has to say about it:
    All right, Tal Fortgang, you’re a clever lad, and a credit to my alma mater. You make some good points, noting that your immigrant grandparents fled the Nazis, and that a working class Jewish kid does not neatly fit in the “white male privilege” cohort.

    I get that your father’s parents and your parents did not come from money, and your being at Princeton is a testament to their hard work and your presumed intelligence. In that, you and I are a lot alike.

    But, holy shit, Tal Fortgang, you are still clueless. Before 1950 or so, Jews were not even admitted to Princeton. You’d be singing a different song if you had applied back in 1914.

    And despite the lofty prose of this excerpt, the opportunity to claw one’s way up the social ladder still depends on your gender, your skin color and your mother tongue. You are committing the same sin of over-generalization as those who lump you in the “white male privilege” group by virtue of your pale skin.
    One of the interesting things about white privilege is that it all depends on outward appearance, at least up to a point. This explains why your average Appalachian can only dream of leaving his or her Eastern Kentucky confines to purchase their own vacation getaway estate on Cape Cod or schmooze with the likes of
    Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild and company. Nevertheless, it's also why a man of color still gets odd looks whenever he attempts to integrate himself into the white collective. Getting the "swarth" out of the Italian or the "unruly papist" out of the Irish is one thing, but no one's quite figured out how to get the "negro" out of a Negro without sufficiently sullying the collective's pristine appearance.

    Tal is understandably fed up with being lumped in a group by virtue of his outward appearance. Scores of young black men would likely sympathize with him on that particular account. But at the end of the day, Tal remains the right shade in a land where being the right shade lends you a far greater amount of slack and far less scrutiny than being a highly-visible outlier. It's this fact that goes sailing over Tal's head as he goes further into detail:
    That’s the problem with calling someone out for the “privilege” which you assume has defined their narrative. You don’t know what their struggles have been, what they may have gone through to be where they are. Assuming they’ve benefitted from “power systems” or other conspiratorial imaginary institutions denies them credit for all they’ve done, things of which you may not even conceive. You don’t know whose father died defending your freedom. You don’t know whose mother escaped oppression. You don’t know who conquered their demons, or may still be conquering them now.
    One can only assume the bolded is supposed to be a dig against black American claims of the system being institutionally predisposed to retaining men and women of color at the bottom rung of the socioeconomic ladder. The remainder of the message serves to remind these same folks that there are plenty of whites around who don't truck with that "white privilege" mess and have even laid their lives down in defense of freedom and civil rights.

    But the fact that Tal can easily shed his Jewish vestments and effortlessly blend into the bland background that makes up most of American society is utterly lost on him. This literal "fade to white" ability helps when it comes to snagging various opportunities that those without it have to fight tooth and nail to get.

    Speaking of which, it reminds me of a story someone told me of how some black Americans had to make their fortune during the heyday of Jim Crow: "you have to sneak by them." And many black Americans have had to "sneak by" people and institutions that would have denuded them of their wealth and livelihoods if given half the chance. Tal's grandparents may have had to sneak by the Waffen-SS to survive, but at least they didn't have to sneak by the likes of the Ku Klux Klan and law enforcement officials interested in convict leasing once they got here.

    To recap, Tal Fortgang makes several critical mistakes in his piece:
    1. Assuming that everyone wants him to prostrate himself in apology over white privilege as opposed to simply recognizing that it's there and being conscious of it.
    2. Assuming that people want him to apologize for being white, period.
    3. Co-opting the struggles of his grandparents as his own in an attempt to deflect accusations of enjoying white privilege.
    4. Ignoring his own privilege of being in a highly selective university, especially one where a broad range of doors tend to effortlessly open for its graduates. Being a Princeton student and a future Princeton grad already gives him a tremendous leg up. As mentioned earlier, it's a different level of privilege that recognizes money, lineage and of course, where you went to college.
    When it's all said and done, Tal Fortgang still benefits from privilege, albeit not white privilege in particular. After all, it's highly doubtful that Time, of all places, would commit his story to pixel where it could be seen by millions of readers had it been written at Fisk University and not the Princeton Tory.

  • One of the many problems that come with dealing with the fallout from ingrained, institutionalized racism isn't just knowing who your allies on the other side of the color line are, but whether or not you can trust them to not backstab you for their own gain or to score points with their own.

    That's the problem W. Kamau Bell faced during his recent appearance on HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher:

    Mr. Maher started off the segment with Mr. Ryan’s recent comments about inner city poverty and the cultural dynamics that perpetuate such cycles. The HBO host then asked if Mr. Ryan was simply making an honest observation or something motivated by racial ill will.

    Comedian W. Kamau Bell intimated that some sort of racial malice was involved.

    “You can’t blame the people living in the inner cities, blacks and latinos, for not having jobs where there are no jobs in the inner cities. You can’t blame them when the schools suck, the hospital sucks, there’s no grocery store, all of their fathers are in jail,” Mediaite reported. The panel’s fellow left-leaning guest agreed.

    Then the “Real Time” host tricked his guests, saying: “Let me read something else. Here’s something else Paul Ryan said. He said: ‘When it comes to getting an education, too many of our young people just can’t be bothered. They’re sitting on couches for hours playing video games, watching TV instead of dreaming of being a teacher or a lawyer or a business leader — they’re fantasizing about being a baller or a rapper.’ Oh wait, that wasn’t him. That was Michelle Obama. Michelle Obama said that.”

    The camera showed Mr. Bell stunned, at which point Mr. Maher turned to the audience and said: “Hushed silence! […] Is something less true if a white person says it about black people?”

    Note that this comes on the heels of Paul Ryan's recent pontification on "inner city" individuals. And Mr. Bell's response?

    “We talk to each other differently than when we talk to [white people],” Mr. Bell responded.

    Which goes on to illustrate yet another problem that comes with dealing with ingrained, institutionalized racism: a sometimes deliberate lack of understanding by white American liberals of how black Americans see the problems before them, how white conservatives and the unreconstructed see them and a failure to recognize context.

    The First Lady's statements come from a place of genuine concern and understanding of the problems black Americans face in the inner city.

    Paul Ryan's statements come from a place of malice towards and a vocal disdain of said black Americans, for the benefit of his unreconstructed supporters and constituents.

    Listening to Ryan's aired commentary, I'm reminded of Oklahoma state representative Sally Kern's similar assessment of black Americans and other minorities, this time laced in that sugary, patronizing "bless your little heart" tones that struggle to pass for feigned concern. Wondering why Negros just can't seem to get themselves together remains quite the national pastime.

    Meanwhile, Bell didn't get bamboozled so much that he was caught flatfooted behind what was essentially a betrayal by someone he thought was on the same page. He tried to brace himself for getting sucker-punched by someone looking to score points by unearthing a "black leftist racist" on his show, presumably for whatever shock value that'd get him...and he still "got slept."

    He was so shocked that he couldn't articulate why it was disingenuous of Maher to treat those two statements from two ideologically different people of different backgrounds as one and the same, or better yet, as vindication for anyone looking to tar and feather black liberal thinkers and commentators as somehow more racist than their white counterparts. As I've found out myself, talking about racism among such people invites accusations that it's you who's the "real racist," as the best way to "end" racism is to stop talking about it, even if it involves conversation on how to resolve it.



  • You'd figure the Ku Klux Klan would be a nascent relic of the bad old days long gone. In spite of the sheer terror inspired by these and countless other groups at the height of Jim Crow and the Civil Rights era, it remains hard for many folks to take seriously a bunch of bed sheet and bath robe-wearing imbeciles with a remarkable persecution complex. Nevertheless, the following should give anyone brief pause:

    Deal: "Why do you want your face covered here?"
    Grand Dragon: "Because I care about my job."
    The two claim to be part of an invisible empire.
    "We have police officers, paramedics, judges," said the grand dragon. "They're everywhere."
    And the members said they're 1,000 members strong and growing.
    "You start looking at numbers, start looking at census and you realize whites are the minority," said the other klansman.
    That's why he joined a year ago, saying he's interested in preserving the white race.

    Unless you're a FBI agent deep undercover within these groups, it's hard to suss out whether or not this is all just hot air. But given the predilection of law enforcement officials to heap abuse on minorities and for legal system representatives to stack the deck against them, it's something that'll undoubtedly occupy the backs of many a minority's mind.

    And that's the thing. In many cases, no one knows what lurks in the hearts of men and women, especially when it involves them dealing with black Americans and other minorities. Whereas the Deep South and other places touched by Jim Crow proudly wore their collective racism on their sleeves for all the world to see, today's racism comes in a variety of innocuous and covert forms. With overt racism relegated to society's dustbin, many of the unreconstructed among us have opted for a quieter, more covert form of bigotry involving dog whistles, code words and a simple refusal to air their views in "polite company."

    For many minorities, it's nearly impossible to know if the smiling face they see in front of them hides a butcher's knife intended for their back. Black Americans and other minorities have plenty of reason to be distrustful of their white counterparts, often to the detriment of white Americans who mean well but are nonetheless slighted by what they process as "black racism."

    When you think about it, there's already an "invisible empire" of police, judges and others of authority, but you won't see them at the next Wednesday night cross burning ceremony - they're not interested in what the Klan has to offer. Instead, its a tangled web of individual prejudices, whether personally held or institutionally or parentally indoctrinated, converging into a matrix of racism that transcends boundaries. Chances are this "invisible empire" has little to no inkling that it's working to maintain the white status quo through millions of individual movements, but that's exactly what's happening.

    There's something else that's freaking the hoods right out:

    "You start looking at numbers, start looking at census and you realize whites are the minority," said the other klansman.

    The writing is on the wall, according to recent U.S. Census studies - it expects white Americans to fall into minority status as soon as 2043. A sobering thought for anyone who subscribes to Racial Holy War (RaHoWa) theory and obsesses over the Turner Diaries. Fears of turnabout being fair play with "Whitey" in the minority's seat is driving what I can only accurately describe as a terminal case of psychosis within the ranks of the unreconstructed and a rush to embrace the same sort of "victimhood" that black Americans get taken to the woodshed over on a regular basis. Better to prepare for the inevitable, I suppose.

    Unfortunately, many other Americans are preparing in other ways, namely by hoarding more guns and adopting a quasi-survivalist's mentality that relegates the cities to the so-called "chimps," "thugs" and "liberals," while "real Americans" hunker down in concrete bunkers while burning their own dung and filtering their own piss through expensive water purification systems, all while watching "zombies" descend on the Super Bowl on a flatscreen TV attached to one of several brand-new generators they had stocked up during the last "scare."

    As for the Klan itself, exposing many of these hood-doning cowards would quickly thin out the ranks until only the most unrepentant were left. And for all of their bravado, they and other white supremacist groups will never express the desire to take on the likes of the Black P-Stones, Gangsters Disciples, MS13 or any other well-armed and well-seasoned minority gangs. As any sensible predator would have it, only the weak and vulnerable will do.
  • Last time on DDSS, yours truly brought to you a comparison between the criminal trial of Amanda Knox and that of Richard Hinds and James Blackston. Since then, there have been a few developments.

    Predictably, Hinds and Blackston were convicted and sentenced to 5 to 10 years and 3 years, respectively. However, Hinds testified that Japanese police officials altered his statement to secure a more ironclad case:

    At the Tokyo District Court, Hinds stated that Furlong had repeatedly asked him to put his hand on her neck. He says that he did so, but only used light pressure for periods of 30 seconds, and that’s what he told the Japanese police. Hinds’ lawyer is arguing that his statement was changed, and police wrote that he used pressure for periods of “two or three minutes.”

    Do take care to flag and report the unsavory comments left by individuals who are absolutely tumescent over the prospect of a black male being treated at the hands of the Japanese prison system. Right about now, someone somewhere is looking up the katakana for "prison bitch."

    Meanwhile, you'd think that Amanda Knox would be somewhere working out a book deal on her harrowing ordeal at the hands of Italian law enforcement while savoring her new-found freedom.

    Turns out that freedom might be fleeting, after all:

    Amanda Knox said in an emotional interview on Friday that news of the Italian court reinstating her murder conviction in the 2007 killing of her British roommate Meredith Kercher hit her "like a train."

    "I did not expect this to happen," Knox told Robin Roberts on "Good Morning America. "I really expected so much better from the Italian justice system. They found me innocent before."

    The 26-year-old shared a house in the Italian town of Perugia with Kercher, then 21, who was found partially naked in a pool of blood, her throat slashed.

    Knox and her former boyfriend, Raffaele Sollecito, 29, were convicted of the crime in 2009 and had spent four years in prison before their acquittal in 2011.

    However, Italy’s highest court overturned the acquittal and ordered a new appeal, saying the first was riddled with “shortcomings, contradictions and inconsistencies.”

    Though she was not in the Florence courtroom Thursday when Judge Alessandro Nencini sentenced her to 28 years and six months in prison, more than the 26 years she received at her first trial in 2011, she told Roberts she watched an Italian television station online to hear the verdict.

    "I needed to hear it for myself," she said. "My whole family was there and I was listening and I'm the only one who knows Italian and I'm trying to listen and then tell them."

    If the conviction's upheld, Knox will likely find herself on a one-way flight back to Italy:

    "I will never go willingly back to the place where I ...," she said, pausing. "I'm going to fight this to the very end. It's not right and it's not fair. ... I'm going to do everything I can."

    Apparently, Knox's (ex) boyfriend and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito knew what was up and attempted to book it out of Italy, but wound up being stopped short of the Slovenian and Austrian borders.

    It's amazing how circumstances can change in a short amount of time.
  • Courtesy of Bowdoin College

    Until recently, the heartbreaking tale of Malaga Island remained buried within the recesses of Maine's collective history, largely as something most wanted lost in the sands of time. And like the stories surrounding Rosewood, Florida and the Greenwood community of Tulsa, Oklahoma, it's a story where prejudice and hatred took center stage to annihilate a community:

    A century ago this spring, Maine Gov. Frederick Plaisted oversaw the destruction of a year-around fishing hamlet on Malaga Island, a 42-acre island in the New Meadows River, just off the Phippsburg shore. The island's 40 residents -- white, black and mixed race -- were ordered to leave the island, and to take their homes with them, else they would be burned. A fifth of the population was incarcerated on questionable grounds at the Maine School for the Feebleminded in New Gloucester, where most spent the rest of their lives. The island schoolhouse was dismantled and relocated to Louds Island in Muscongus Bay.

    Leaving no stone unturned, state officials dug up the 17 bodies in the island cemetery, distributed them into five caskets and buried them at the School of the Feebleminded -- now Pineland Farms -- where they remain today.

    Several islanders spent the rest of their lives in this state-run mental institution. One couple, Robert and Laura Darling Tripp, floated from place to place in a makeshift houseboat, but, unwelcomed, wound up moored to another scrap of an island. Malnourished, Laura fell sick during a gale; when her husband returned with help, he found the couple's two children clinging to her lifeless body. Many others suffered from the stigma of being associated with the island.

    "After the island was cleared, people did not really want to talk about this incident, especially the descendants, because to raise your hand and say you were from Malaga supposedly meant you were feebleminded or had black blood in you or both," said Rob Rosenthal, whose 2009 radio documentary "Malaga: A Story Better Left Untold" helped draw attention to what is one of the most disgraceful official acts in our state's history. "Nobody wanted to declare that."

    The prelude to Malaga Island's wholesale clearing rings similar to the events preceding the destruction of Rosewood and Greenwood - whereas the latter involved the perceived threat of miscegenation through sexual assault, Malaga Island was a community where not only did black and white Americans co-mingle freely, but the threat of miscegenation was realized through the presence of mixed families on the island. By all counts, that was something that neither the eugenicists of the era nor those who endorsed their views could abide by:

    But the shell middens offered no protection from Gov. Plaisted, who visited the obscure island with his entire executive council in July 1911. That December, the governor ordered the eviction of the community, and officials institutionalized eight residents, some for failing to identify a telephone (which none had likely seen) or for not knowing that William Howard Taft had succeeded Teddy Roosevelt as president. Those who remained were given payments for their homes and ordered to leave -- with or without them -- by the first of July, 1912.

    Later that year, the cemetery was cleared and the island sold to a close friend and business partner of the chair of Plaisted's executive council, Dr. Gustavus C. Kilgore of Belfast, who played a central role in the creation of the governor's policies, including signing the commitment orders for those sent to New Gloucester.

    Nobody has lived on the island since.

    A Sun Journal article (Google cached version here) describes how the island came under ownership of the MCHT:

    In 2001, the MCHT bought Malaga Island from a man who sold it at a bargain price because he wanted the island to be preserved. He wanted to keep developers away and he wanted local fishermen to continue using the island.

    "But for this generous landowner," says Rich Knox, communications director at MCHT, "there would be houses out here. There would be no archeology, no education. If it wasn't for land conservation, you wouldn't have these kinds of places."

    Now this is interesting. I'd like to know about this man and anyone else who came into ownership of the island after Kilgore.


    It took nearly a century for the state of Maine to express regret and issue an apology. That's another common thread linking Greenwood, Rosewood and Malaga Island together. The passage of time does a lot of things. It dries freshly drawn blood and turns hot, vivid pain into a dull, distant ache. It makes people forget, especially if what's to be remember is buried under the ever-growing rubble of history itself.

    But for better or worst, it makes talking about events such as those on Malaga Island "safe" to talk about, as the people involved in this injustice are themselves long in the ground and therefore only culpable in the eyes of history. The descendants of those who perpetrated this terrible act are also removed from any culpability by virtue of time. All that's left is the descendants of the victims and their willingness to make the world aware of what happened. And, of course, the various historians and archaeologists tasked with studying what life was like before the community was destroyed:

    Malaga's people were certainly poor. The island's soil is inappropriate for farming, and fishing, laboring or doing laundry and carpentry for mainlanders didn't pay well. Their homes were modest, and one family lived in a converted ship's cabin. Some relied on charity from the town to get through the winter, and in 1908 private donors stepped in to help build an island school. School ledgers have survived.

    "The papers written by the students show their penmanship was perfect and their spelling was better than mine," said Lynda Wyman, a trustee at the Phippsburg Historical Society, which also will have a small Malaga exhibit this summer. "It absolutely shows that kids were educated, not illiterate or so-called feebleminded or any of those things."

    Archaeological digs by University of Southern Maine researchers Nathan Hamilton and Robert Sanford show the islanders caught lobsters, shellfish, cod and even swordfish. Thousands of buttons near the home of the island's laundress attest to how much washing she took in from Phippsburg's boardinghouses.

    They built their homes on piles of discarded clam, mussel and scallop shells because they could be made level and provided excellent drainage. In doing so, they inadvertently gave a valuable gift to 21st-century archeologists.

    "The shell middens protected almost all the artifacts and household stuff they mixed into it, and we actually know who lived on each spot," Hamilton said. "To actually have a patch of ground where we know the name and age of the individuals associated with it, their race, their jobs and when they lived there -- that's really interesting and unique."

    These people made a life for themselves, free of the interference, strife and hardship that was endemic in many places where various forms of prejudice were tolerated and even given legal sanction. And because the community's existence upset the sensibilities of a powerful few while giving license to naked greed, Frederick Plaisted and his executive council found ample justification to right what they saw as a wrong and, in the process, committed a crime that cast a lingering pall over Phippsburg and the rest of the state for an entire century.

    The events that happened afterward were especially appalling. To erase practically every single trace of the inhabitants' existence from the island by unearthing and removing its dead meant harboring a blinding, intense hatred and nearly unfathomable disrespect. To declare a fifth of the population as "feebleminded" and condemn them to a life of unjustified institutionalization required a mind attuned to the belief of the Negro and those who deigned to mix with them as "feebleminded" as any mentally ill individual. To re-intern those dead on the same grounds of that institution required pure, unadulterated malice.

    It didn't just border on evil - it practically was.

    The first step of reconciliation involves admitting you were wrong, but that's only the beginning:

    Relatives of the Malaga evictees say having a high-profile exhibit at the state's official museum is cathartic, but there is another step Voter would still like to see. "Closure for me is to return the bodies to the island because my aunts died there believing their bones would become part of it," she said. "Removing the bodies was the difference between eviction and annihilation."

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