Different Day, Same Shit.

Health insurance. It's something you might not think you need, until you need it. Then you wish you had it. Or perhaps you want it but simply can't afford it. Either way, it's a critical necessity, despite what many people think to the contrary.

Confused over the ongoing fight over Obamacare? What to know exactly what the hell's going on and how it could possibly affect you? Then take a seat and read on as yours truly attempts to hash out an explanation. Keep in mind this explanation is rather simple and to the point, so there might be a few technical things and other nuances that got thrown out of the boat:

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To better understand Obamacare and people's reactions to it across the political spectrum, it's important to understand how health insurance in works, not just in general, but in this country and elsewhere.

How the hell does this health insurance stuff work?

Health insurance is essentially a large group of recipients paying into a pool of money. When a recipient needs medical care, whether it's preventative care (monthly checkups, etc.) or emergency care, money is taken from the pool to pay for their expenses. Since health insurance works on the principle of there being more healthy people than sick, there's always a relatively large pool of money to tap into.

What's up with insurance companies and their coverages and why does the shit cost so much?

The vast majority of people in the United States rely on private health insurance providers. Here, most folks pay either a (steep) monthly or annual premium out of their own wallets or have a portion of their paycheck deducted to pay for a healthcare plan shared with their coworkers. As a result, there are thousands of different pools that people pay into for their coverage, some more expensive than others, all of them with their own rules and guidelines.

Private health insurance providers also have plenty of leeway regarding who gets to dip into the pool and who doesn't. On the face of it, you can't blame them - thousands of scattered insurance pools are more vulnerable to getting syphoned dry by people with a boatload of health risk factors. That means smokers, the morbidly obese, diabetics and others with a slew of health problems are either told to pay ridiculous amounts of money or get tossed out of the pool. Got a preexisting condition? Good luck. Insurance companies also have their profits to think of. These profits usually average around three percent, but that's been bumped up to around eight percent as of late, accompanied by rising premiums. Ordinary Joes and Janes who are the perfect image of health are forced to pay much more than they should, just to cover both profit margins and the folks who need to dip into the money pool.

And that dip's a relatively deep one, too. Thanks to the high cost of health insurance, approximately 48 million Americans, many of whom are on the wrong side of the poverty line, simply go without. That means they go without preventative care unless they're lucky enough to either pay for it out of pocket or land a job that gives them some form of coverage. A lack of preventative care means that potential health issues go undetected, usually for years at a time. In the end, most people won't go to the hospital until the proverbial shit hits the fan and they need a trip to the emergency room. Emergency room care costs big bucks. So does surgery and treatment for issues that could have been nipped in the bud early on (like, say, cancer). At any rate, the overall cost of healthcare skyrockets.

My health insurance provider told me to go fuck myself with a rusty pipe when I got sick. What's up with that?

Of course, insurance companies absolutely hate paying out hundreds of thousands of dollars to cover medical expenses, hence they'll find any excuse in the book (and a few that don't exist) to unceremoniously drop paying recipients if they dip too deep into the money pool too often. In fact, many companies have panels that review medical requests before signing off on them and those that don't meet their particular criteria are often denied. They'll also stiff hospitals on the bill, which is why they routinely charge insurance companies much more than necessary just in case they get shortchanged. The fight between hospitals, private insurers and their customers can easily be replicated by laying down in the middle of a pack of starving pitbulls with a bloody steak on your face.

Did you know that many private health insurance providers have a network of select hospitals their insured customers can only go to if they're to expect continuing coverage? Stray outside of that network and be prepared to take that second mortgage out on your soul.

So what's this single-payer shit I keep hearing about?

On the other hand, there's single-payer healthcare, commonly known as socialized or universal healthcare. With this type of coverage, there's one money pool (usually administered by a government agency) and every citizen in the country it's enacted in pays into that pool, usually through taxes or mandated fees. Except for the desperately poor, who are given a break and are still allowed to draw out of that pool. The all-inclusive nature of the single-payer system means that 1)there's only one huge pool to pay into and draw out of, therefore 2)there's always enough money in the pool to cover every paying recipient, plus those who aren't able to pay and 3)recipients wind up paying far less in premiums than they had to with private coverage.

Since it's the government footing the bill, hospitals and healthcare providers can rest easier knowing that they'll pay. And since it's the government's dime, the government itself can dictate exactly how much it's willing to pay said hospitals, thereby lowering overall costs.

In short, single-payer saves money. Instead of ignoring that stabbing, throbbing pain in the side for months until you get rushed to the emergency room for a $10k stay and a $100k emergency surgery, your single-payer coverage allows you to go to the doctor to see what that pain's all about. Thanks to that huge pool effectively subsidizing your doctor's visit, the $1k in preventative care costs you zero or damn near close to it.

Other, more respectable countries throughout the world have some form of universal health coverage, provided through public funding sourced from taxes and fees. Some countries combine their publicly funded healthcare with optional coverage from a private health insurer. Other countries leave their healthcare coverage up to these private companies, but strongly regulate how much they can charge and even provide significantly low-cost (or free) health insurance coverage. This is essentially the route that Obamacare's going (but more on that in a minute).

Wait...doesn't that sound an awful lot like Medicare/Medicaid?

It does, doesn't it? In fact, some would say that a single-payer system in America would just be Medicare for All.* As it stands, Medicare is strictly for those over age 65 or anyone with disabilities. Medicaid is for people who are too poor to purchase private coverage on their own - mainly families, women and children. Unfortunately, the eligibility requirements vary among each state. Each year, the federal government disburses a set amount of money to individual states for their Medicare and Medicaid programs. Some states are more generous with the proceeds than others.

Okay...Obamacare.

Once upon a time, President Barack Obama foolishly attempted to bring single-payer healthcare to these United States. The measure was dragged behind the Capitol by conservative legislators and unceremoniously double-tapped in the head. The End.

Said legislators dressed the corpse in a new suit, took out the stuff they didn't really like (like the whole single-payer thing), slapped on a sticker reading "private insurance-friendly" and reintroduced it as the Affordable Care Act, which Congress passed and the president eventually signed in March 2010.

The simplest explanation of "Obamacare" (which is what opponents called it whenever they wanted to disparage it - the name kinda stuck after a while) is that it's a stop-gap between private insurance and single-payer insurance. In other words, all of the private healthcare providers are now part of a regulated "exchange" where they are obligated to insure each and every citizen, regardless of their condition, at something approaching relatively sane premiums.

At the same time, each and every citizen is obligated (hence the term "individual mandate) to sign up for health insurance, so they won't get tempted to sign up for a quick, free dip into the money pool just at the moment they get sick and subsequently screw other paying customers. Those who don't sign up by March 31, 2014 get hit with a penalty, starting at $95 or 1 percent of your taxable income, whichever's greater.

So I lose $95/year if I don't sign up. Big whoop.

$95 or 1 percent of your taxable income. You make $70,000/year? That's $700 you have to pay. And it gets worse. By 2015, the penalty grows to $325 or 2 percent of your taxable income. The year after and subsequent years, its $695 or 2.5 percent of taxable income.

But Mack! I don't even have a pot to piss in, let alone a window. How am I gonna pay for this shit?

You don't. At least if your income's below a certain threshold. In addition to the individual mandate, the Affordable Care Act also expands Medicaid coverage to include individuals age 19 to 65. That means those stuck below the federal poverty line can simply opt for Medicaid coverage. That is, if their state's playing ball.




Thanks to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that mandated voluntary participation, 22 states have opted out or are leaning close to opting out of the federal government's Medicaid expansion through the ACA. That means if you make more than 100% of the federal poverty level, you can buy your health insurance coverage through the exchange for a significant discount. If not, you're left to the tender mercies of your state's income thresholds for Medicaid eligibility.

In the Great State of Alabama, the Medicaid income threshold for a family of three is $3,221. Per year. Make more than $3,221 but fall short of the $19,530 required to qualify for Obamacare? You're just about as screwed as the folks stuck in the Medicare Part D "doughnut hole".

Speaking of Medicare, the Affordable Care Act also unfucks a lot of what was wrong with it. For starters, enrollees get more preventative services (e.g. mammograms, colonoscopies, etc.) without paying extra. Enrollees stuck in the $2,970- $4,750 drug cost "doughnut hole" also receive a 50-percent discount when they purchase Part D-covered brand-name prescription drugs at the counter.

So why do guys like Ted Cruz treat Obamacare like the spawn of Satan and Grace Jones?

Because Tea Party?

But seriously, that's a good question that can only be answered with yet another lengthy and well thought-out blog post.

*Ba boom tish!

I thought about getting a gun.

Like many people, I thought about getting one for my own personal protection, especially in rough, crime-ridden areas where the onus to protect one's self becomes exceedingly great. I also thought about obtaining a concealed carry permit. It's something I've thought about doing for a while, now. Thing is, I've never had one before. As a youngun, my mother wouldn't even let me entertain the notion of playing with one of those toy cap guns. Considering how law enforcement officials tend to mistake cell phones and wallets for deadly firearms, it was probably for the best.

In my state, it's relatively easy - a simple exchange of funds (and a perfunctory background check for gun store sales) and a permit application that'll most likely be accepted without much hassle. However, I've always developed second thoughts about having a gun.

I started asking myself a few questions: "do you really need this? Can you handle the responsibility of having this around?" A purchase like this is nothing to take lightly...or perhaps I've just always talked myself out of going through with it at the last minute...

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A gun is nothing to fuck around with. It's an instrument with one clearly defined purpose, leaving the user to decide whether to use it for protection of oneself or others, or to use it in malice. It's an easy instrument to use in anger, as tens of thousands of people currently incarcerated for firearms-related crimes could attest to. 8,583 Americans would attest to it, too, if they were alive to talk about it. It's also an easy instrument to use in despair. 19,392 Americans would attest to that fact had they managed to survive their suicide attempts with them.

One has to consider their own mental state of being when it comes to purchasing and keeping a firearm in the home or on one's person. One has to consider the well-being of others who could possibly come into contact with one, either by accident or otherwise. 1,300 Americans under the age of 25 would attest to the dangers of accidental gun discharges if they were still alive.

Last but not least, one has to be careful not to get sucked into the "cowboy/tough guy" image that comes with certain aspects of gun ownership. For some, having the ability to end someone's life in an instant is the ultimate rush and it's one that often leads them to adopt cavalier attitudes and to do stupid things and take idiotic risks that they otherwise wouldn't have taken had they not had instant death in the palm of their hands.

A gun comes with a healthy heaping of responsibility. For protection purposes, it should be treated as a means of the very last resort. Not as a tool of intimidation. Not as a trump card for dealing with otherwise trivial situations. Not as a cool accessory that makes you look tougher than you really are. A gun should not give you false courage. A gun demands a measure of respect for its abilities. Those who don't respect guns are often undone by them.

There are people who responsibly own and enjoy firearms for sport - hunting, target practice, etc. - that sort of thing. By far and large, they respect their firearms for what they're capable of and handle them accordingly. As it should be everywhere else, gun safety is paramount with these folks. Sadly, there are many people who don't share the same sort of beliefs or respect for firearms.

For now, I've put off buying that gun, especially in light of continuing gun violence from all corners.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

The above quoted is just one of many often cited from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's iconic "I Have a Dream" speech. It's also one that's often taken out of context by many people, mainly those who want to twist the above quoted's ultimate meaning to fit their own perspectives.

In other words, I've seen and heard instances where the phrase "content of their character" is often used to implicitly reinforce one's prejudices and preconceived notions of a particular group. During my brief lurkings at the Free Republic, I ran into constant examples of people denigrating a certain segment of black Americans as criminal-minded and predisposed to general thuggery, only to claim that they were merely looking at "the content of their character, as Dr. King would have them do."

Then there are others who use "the content of their character" to justify their opposition towards measures developed to achieve the sort of equality that was denied for so long (and continues to be denied, in many cases.) For example, opponents of Affirmative Action may ask that if Dr. King was so intent on having people judge black Americans solely on "the content of their character," then perhaps they don't need such a measure at all, since "the content of their character" would supposedly be all they needed to integrate and thrive in the American mainstream.

Of course, this ignores both historic and ongoing efforts to exclude black Americans from the mainstream. It's the equivalent of beating a man into paraplegia and then expecting him to win a marathon. Asking why he would need someone to push him around would be an unnecessary action.

Personally speaking, I believe Dr. King wanted his children to grow up in a world willing to acknowledge its shortcomings and work sincerely and diligently to correct those flaws. He didn't want them growing up in a world that used the notion of "colorblindness" as an excuse to completely paper over and ignore the deep-set problems of structural and institutionalized racism.

He also didn't want them growing up in a world where his speeches, his words and his legacy would be appropriated and perverted into unrecognizable soundbites that certain people can hide behind to mask their own inability or unwillingness to judge others solely on character and not based on preconceived notions.

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The idea of being asked to judge someone solely by their character, only to be told to help them based on something other than their character confuses many, especially if they are not cognizant of the underlying problems that ingrained and institutionalized racism pose. In fact, it seems to certain people as though black Americans want to enjoy a double-standard of sorts - help us based on race, but don't judge us based on race.

As a result, a group of people whose socio-economic growth was deliberately throttled by a combination of sanctioned institutional action and personal prejudice are now constantly told to go about the process of recovery alone, without any sort of assistance. After all, why need a helping hand when mainstream society finally sees fit to overlook their own prejudices in favor of "the content of their character?"



Joy DeGruy's account of her own personal character being blatantly overlooked by a cashier in favor of said cashier's own preconceived notions drives home why "the content of their character" takes on a bitter edge on the tongues of some. That people are content to judge based on their own assumptions, only to break out the "content of their character" chestnut to reinforce or explain away their assumptions shows that there's a lot of work to be done in untangling the Gordian knot of ethnic relations in this country.

That DeGruy had to carefully consider her response without falling into the dreaded "angry black woman" stereotype before her sister-in-law, noted as able to pass for white, stepped to her defense with a heavy dose of white privilege welded against the cashier, is also an unfortunate indicator of Dr. King's dream being a distant goal.

White privilege is being able to dress however you want and not be thrown out of a store, harassed by security guards, or assumed you’re some sort of thug.

Every time I walk out of my house, I need to question my appearance. Do I look dangerous? Do I look like a shoplifter? Do I look like I’m up to no good? If I wear sweat pants and sneakers, will people assume I’m from the ghetto? If I dress too nicely, will people assume I bought my clothes with drug money? If I walk into a store, will the shop assistants ignore me or will security escort me out? If I speak too loudly, will people assume I’m being “sassy” or “trashy”? If I speak too quietly, will people assume I’m not very bright? And so on.

This is what people have to deal with when others choose to judge them on assumptions and notions. Trayvon Martin and countless others were judged on assumptions about their character and not based on who they really were as people. Those who judge based on assumptions then carelessly throw around the "content of their character" to impose a "colorblind" scenario that denies black Americans the right to address their concerns and ask for assistance and recompense.

From Dr. King himself:

"It is impossible to create a formula for the future which does not take into account that our society has been doing something special against the Negro for hundreds of years. How then can he be absorbed into the mainstream of American life if we did not do something special for him now, in order to balance the equation and equip him to compete on an equal basis?

It is obvious that if a man is entering the starting line of a race three hundred yeas after another man, the first would have to perform some impossible feat in order to catch up with his fellow runner."

For the past few months, Koch Carbon, an affiliate of Koch Industries, stored tons of petroleum coke on a lot near the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge. This stuff happens to be a byproduct of the ongoing tar sands oil operations in Alberta, Canada. When it's not sitting idle on some industrial lot, the "pet coke" is usually shipped overseas as a cheap but nastier alternative to coal.

Normally, this stuff is hosed down with an epoxy to keep it from blowing everywhere. The following is what happens when the epoxy stops working.



After seeing portions of the city devolve into wastelands and crumble to bits, the average Detroiter probably thinks this is the shriveled cherry on top of a heaping shit sundae. Understandably, Detroit and Windsor residents are a bit upset over their respective cities being treated like dumps.

To top it all off, all of that pet coke was being stored without a permit:

After months of operating without one, the company responsible for Detroit’s petroleum coke piles went hunting for one Tuesday.

Detroit Bulk Storage representatives faced a city panel that will decide the issue. At times, panel members were highly skeptical of the company’s actions.

A company representative said they didn’t know they needed a permit to openly store pet coke along the Detroit River.

It’s stopped taking additional shipments of the substance — a byproduct of refining Canadian tar sands oil — until it gets one.

“Our understanding was that once we were moving toward compliance, we could continue our operations,” said Detroit Bulk Storage lawyer Terri Whitehead.

A Detroit Bulk Storage representative also insists the company is using “best practices” when it comes to handling the openly-stored piles safely.

Fantastic.

Imperfection is a constant when it comes to the human condition, with perfection a fleeting goal fated to dangle perpetually out of reach. Nevertheless, some people expect those among them who do extraordinary things to be about as perfect as the heroes depicted in Hollywood movies. Charles Ramsey, with the help of Angelo Cordero, did the extraordinary by playing a key role in the release of three women who were abducted, confined and abused in a nearby home for a decade. He could have turned a blind eye and keep walking, but he didn't. That's what makes this so extraordinary.

Charles Ramsey isn't a perfect man. He, like all human beings, has his flaws. He's certainly made some bad decisions in his past. The Smoking Gun made sure to remind people of those bad decisions by digging up Ramsey's criminal record.

Does this make him any less of a hero? It depends on how one views his actions. Advocates in the fight against domestic violence would not be inclined to give Ramsey a pass just because he did something heroic later on, and they shouldn't. Others would say Ramsey's past shouldn't overshadow or devalue the good he's done. Does a heroic act wash away or cancel out an act of violence? It doesn't. Being a "pillar of the community" while engaging in vile behavior is the height of hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, the narrative of the day calls for any hero to be flawless in character, otherwise said hero winds up becoming a target for denigration. Our natural inclination towards hero worship demands heroes with impeccable character and moral grounding. It's part of the reason why "perfect" superheroes like Superman exist on print and film.

But just as there aren't any perfect humans, there aren't any perfect heroes, either. We manage to emphasize and reconcile ourselves with deliberately flawed heroes like Batman and the Punisher, but it seems impossible to use to do the same with flawed people in real life.

It's tough to reconcile the good someone does with the bad and to judge which one outweighs which in a given circumstance. It's even tougher to acknowledge that both can not only exist, but be seen on the same plane at the same time with an objective eye. It's worse when anyone uses the bad in a deliberate attempt to smear and marginalize the good that person's done.

Charles Ramsey is a hero, but he's also a man and a man with his share of flaws, at that.

Whatever you're doing, drop it and read this. Courtesy of BuzzFeed's John Stanton and Justin Green at The Daily Beast.

Just as I finished writing "The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage," I found out Bill Schmalfeldt, the man behind the Daily Kos article referenced therein, was banned from the blogging network days after writing his article. As I mentioned at the end, it didn't sit well with a lot of Kos commentators and Schmalfeldt wound up with worse for wear because of it.

It got to the point where Daily Kos readers were actively calling for Schmalfeldt to issue a mea culpa and delete his diary post. Instead of a mea culpa, Schmalfeldt wrote another post that politely told anyone who was offended where they could go, for all intents and purposes.

Was Schmalfeldt's piece offensive? Yours truly didn't think it was, but then again, I'm a guy with an eye towards biting sarcasm and satire. I saw the vast majority of the piece as dripping with sarcasm, especially when it came to the following:

Heck, if you're a man and you're honest with yourself, you LIKE being on the "doling it out" end of anal sex. How many heterosexual men reading this diary right now have never asked their wife or girlfriend to just take a deep breath, relax, "I'll just put in the tip and we'll see how it goes," and then you ram it home like Captain Kidd jamming his sword back into his scabbard while she hollers "takeitouttakeitouttakeitout" and you tell her to just relax and it won't hurt so bad and she starts kicking and screaming "takeitOUTtakeitOUTtakeitOUT youfuckingbastardpieceofshit" and you finally do (because the walls are thin and your neighbors just LOVE calling the cops) and you tell her she should have at least given herself a chance to relax and enjoy it and she (if she's your wife) doesn't let you anywhere near her with "that thing" for weeks and if she's your girlfriend she stops returning your calls?

Some people thought Schmalfeldt was being callous and juvenile. Others thought he actually condoned rough, non-consensual sex, gay or straight. A few commentators pointed out what they thought to be "rape language" and took Schmalfeldt to task. Two commentators who were rape survivors were "triggered" by the prostate exam illustration (yes, the same one that was also posted in "The True Reasons Why Conservatives Are Against Gay Marriage.") The criticism bordered on vitriolic and borderline-slanderous, so much so that one commentator chimed in, worried that defending Schmalfeldt would get him banned from Daily Kos.

I wanted to get some background on the whole thing and find out what Schmalfeldt was all about. Instead, I ran into what reads as a gloat piece from Robert Stacy McCain's blog:

Schmalfeldt created that Photoshop of Palin bleeding with a stake through her forehead to illustrate a post he wrote under his “Bill Matthews” alias at the Examiner, a deceit he perpetrated after his harassment of fellow Examiner contributors got Schmalfeldt axed as the “Liberal in Baltimore” columnist at the Examiner. He returned as “Bill Matthews” of Wisconsin (despite being a Maryland resident not named Matthews) and kept up that charade until getting banned permanently from the Examiner in August.

Photoshopped images of Republicans spattered in blood is a favorite theme with Schmalfeldt, as shown by an image of Allen West he created to illustrate a May post at Daily Kos.
So much for the Schmalfeldt “image integrity” lecture, eh? My apologies for using “Schmalfeldt” and “integrity” in the same sentence.

Schmalfeldt is forever burning bridges behind him as he careens from disaster to disaster caused by his antisocial personality. He never accepts responsibility for his failures, always externalizing blame onto his scapegoated enemies. The classic example of this was when Schmalfeldt, clumsily attempting to smear “homophobic” conservatives, published a May 18 Daily Kos diary about anal sex.

Go ahead and click that link. Double-dog dare ya.

To say that Schmalfeldt’s graphic discussion of what he called “the Butt Stuff” was obscene and offensive is to understate the matter. Perhaps the most adequate description is “Too Disgusting for Daily Kos,” which is really saying something.

And another from Lee Stranahan:

R.S. McCain has been putting the career of Bill Schmalfeldt into proper perspective over at The Other McCain and it felt it was time to highlight another aspect of Schmalfeldt’s work and personality.

Bill Schmalfeldt is disgusting.

That sounds like a petty insult. It’s not. In the case of Mr. Schmalfeldt, it’s true and very specific. He is intentionally sickeningly repulsive and his writings show a sexual obsession that is profoundly disturbing.

I’m not a prude. I’m not easily offended. This isn’t even a liberal / conservative thing. Bill Schmalfeldt actually managed to offend the readers at the Daily Kos so much that he was essentially run off the website back in May of this year in an article entitled The REAL Conservative Case Against Gay Marriage.

Say, where have we heard that name before? Last mention of Stranahan on DDSS was on the "SWAT-Gate" post, where he played a rather significant role alongside Brandon Darby in their complex hit job of political activist and infamous "Speedway Bomber" Brett Kimberlin. These days, the former liberal-turned-conservative feathers his bed over at Breitbart.

After wading through various posts from McCain, Stranahan, Schmalfeldt himself and Matt Osborne, what I found was...a mess. Stranahan claims he's been stalked and harassed by Schmalfeldt, McCain piles on in defense of Stranahan and Schmalfeldt attacks Stranahan by bringing up countless unsavory aspects of his life before touching the helm of St. Andrew's stained garment.

There's little point in trying to sort this shit out except for my own general amusement, so I'll save others the drama and stop here. In short, I thought the criticism aimed at Schmalfeldt's article back at Daily Kos was overdone and borderline malicious. I also thought Schmalfeldt's banishment from Daily Kos was a bit heavy-handed, as well. In a way, it makes me glad to have my own blog, where I don't have to worry about being shut out after posting material that others find controversial.

Some people say we've reached a point in time where we can truly consider ourselves beyond race. After all, segregation and outright bigotry are both long gone, discrimination's a thing of the past and hey, we even have a black president now. Now we can all join hands, hum "Kumbaya" and look forward to a time where the last remnants of racial antagonism and bigotry can die along with the people who practiced and held those traits, beliefs and ideas.

Or not.

John Derbyshire, in response to black parents giving their children "the talk" about how to best avoid the numerous pitfalls that lead to jail, untimely death, or both, decided to create a "white" version of that talk to give his kids. The big difference between "the talk" and what Derbyshire cooked up lies with how many racial stereotypes, false "facts" and outright bad advice Derbyshire managed to compress in about 15 "life-saving" tips.

Derbyshire starts off by sneering at the rather quaint idea of refraining from archaic terms that border on disrespect or insensitivity towards blacks. This is mixed in with a little bit of "Why can't I call them the N-word?" and "I can call you whatever I want".

(1) Among your fellow citizens are forty million who identify as black, and whom I shall refer to as black. The cumbersome (and MLK-noncompliant) term “African-American” seems to be in decline, thank goodness. “Colored” and “Negro” are archaisms. What you must call “the ‘N’ word” is used freely among blacks but is taboo to nonblacks.

You can already tell where this is headed. As for Tip #2, Derbyshire proudly states that "10 percent of the African American population is more than half European in ancestry", but won't say how that happened. Funny that.

(3) Your own ancestry is mixed north-European and northeast-Asian, but blacks will take you to be white.

Because not even white Americans can tell by sight alone one another's precise ethnic makeup. Hence why people proudly pronounce themselves as "Scots-Irish" or "Italian on my mother's father's side". Otherwise, they're about as white as Wonder Bread, for all intents and purposes.

I wouldn't mind knowing what's on Derbyshire's sons' driver's licenses. Did they tick the "White" box without a second thought? Most likely.

(4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.

Uh-oh. I wonder what Derbyshire meant by that. Don't worry, I'll get into that later on.

Tips #5 through #8 are merely weak statistical justifications for what could be summed up as "typical black behavior," along with something I can only discern as "blacks are not special snowflakes" and "blacks are anti-social." Tip #9 is where we really get down to the meat of the whole article:

(9) A small cohort of blacks—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to whites and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of blacks—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that whites have it coming.

Eh?

You know what? Here's a small exercise for all those paying attention:

(9) A small cohort of whites—in my experience, around five percent—is ferociously hostile to blacks and will go to great lengths to inconvenience or harm us. A much larger cohort of whites—around half—will go along passively if the five percent take leadership in some event. They will do this out of racial solidarity, the natural willingness of most human beings to be led, and a vague feeling that blacks have it coming.

See what just happened?

But it isn't as bad as the following tip #10, along with all the addendums tacked onto it:

(10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

(10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.

(10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.

(10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).

(10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.

(10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.

(10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.

(10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.

(10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.

(10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

I think Derbyshire left out (10j) clutching your (man) purse when passing a strange black and (10k) calling the cops whenever you feel "threatened" by one. And there's always (10k)(2) if you're in a state with a "stand your ground" law: just shoot the black if you feel "threatened". The police will back you and you'll be home for dinner in no time.

Derbyshire's article and advice is akin to a man who stands on his head in the tub and proceeds to take a massive, wet shit all over himself and the tub. John continues his coprophiliac celebration by touching on blacks' inherently low IQ (#11) the evils of Affirmative Action and how his feelings were hurt by the DMV lady who told him he couldn't add "mixed north-European with just a splash of minty northeast-Asian" on his driver's license (#12), how to use "intelligent blacks" as a human shield against accusations of racism (#13 and #14), and an ill-thought-of jab against President Obama (#15) as a parting shot.

And Derbyshire's claiming to teach his kids all of this. One can only hope he's being factious about the whole thing, but considering how many people tend to take their own bigotry seriously, even the most satirical effort can appear to be laced with bitter diatribe that tells the audience how the writer genuinely feels about the whole thing.

The whole point of letting racism and bigotry die becomes moot if people are still passing on their maligned views on other ethnic groups to their offspring. There will always be a need for a proactive approach when it comes to stamping it out. It's not gonna die on its own.

EDIT: Jonah Goldberg does not approve of your work, John:

One of the great things about the Internet is that you can find any number of equally unique platforms on which to converse, discuss and trade information with one another. Reddit was one of those places, unique in that users themselves could create separate, specialized boards known as "subreddits," tailored to any specific interest. These subreddits and Reddit, as a whole, are not subject to any sort of moderation or administration from above and it's often left to the moderators of the subreddits themselves to enforce etiquette and rules, if there are any. At times, this is treated as a good thing. This time, it wasn't.

Yesterday, I read up about Reddit's deletion of several unsavory subreddits, most of them having to do with "jailbait." In keeping with their claims of respect for the First Amendment and "free speech," the administration at Reddit was rather reluctant to do anything about reports of users posting and trading pictures featuring underage teens and young children for sexual gratification, even when there were reports of actual child pornography present within these subreddits. At first, it took the attention of CNN's Anderson Cooper along with well-known humor site and social forum Something Awful for Reddit to shut down "jailbait"-related subreddits, but it was business-as-usual for months afterward.

The people at Something Awful cranked up the pressure, creating a "Redditbomb" that was distributed to practically every outlet possible -- news stations, schools, government officials, bloggers, etc. It was a concerted effort to bring the activities that were going on within those subreddits to light, thereby shocking people into pressuring Advance Publications, the owners of Conde Nast, which in turn once owned Reddit, into cracking down on these activities. This led Reddit to shut down many of the more obvious subreddits and modify their policy on such matters.

There's been debate about the legality of the pictures within these subreddits, especially those involving "jailbait" (essentially those who are below the Age of Consent in your home country). These included otherwise innocent photos of teenagers pulled from Facebook walls and Myspace profiles, in various states of dress, used largely for varying degrees of sexual satisfaction by many subreddit visitors. One could ask why a subreddit full of otherwise "legal" pictures should be closed and others would more than likely point to the sexual satisfaction aspect. Ditto for those "non-nude" models consisting of children under the age of 16, in various states of dress ranging from fully clothed to scantily-clad.

As a member, I had a front-row seat to the forum post over at Something Awful that started the whole thing. For those who can't afford or don't want to pay the $10 membership fee, there's a drastically abridged version of it on the main website.

Throughout the entire episode, I noticed there were three types of people who were upset over these proceedings:

• Those who believe strongly in the concept of free speech on the Internet, no matter the cost or collateral damage.
• Those who are genuinely offended over being denied what they see as their right to ogle at and achieve sexual self-gratification via pictures of teens and preteens in photos spanning the entirety of the COPINE scale.
• Those who have other "guilty pleasures" on Reddit that are not directly related to "jailbait" and see this sea change in moderation as a potential threat to those pleasures.

The former accept the good that comes with concept of free, unfettered speech (the ability to freely speak without being persecuted politically/religiously/etc.) along with the bad that is bound to turn up (racism/sexism/pornography/etc.). The main argument focuses on how this crackdown sets a precedent for future crackdowns, with the scope of said crackdowns widening until you eventually get to political persecutions and the like. Give the administration (or government entity) an inch and they'll take a mile, a few inches at a time. Even if such crackdowns or self-censoring (which is what Reddit is really doing) are for the good of the website and the general public, it's bound to lead to far more aggressive crackdowns or cases of self-censoring in the future. In the end, it's better to simply ignore the offending content and move on. Given the ability to hand-pick your favorite subreddits to the exclusion of others, it's easy to avoid the offending subreddits, as long as the content doesn't spill over.

The problem with the argument of the former group is that it places them in uncomfortable proximity with the second group, a collection of individuals who've enjoyed the unfettered access to photos and stories of young children and teens, some of them being "teen models" or "child models" that flirt with the bleeding edge of legality, others being intimate photos yanked from hacked Myspace and Facebook accounts, with the occasional appearance of what could be considered actual child pornography. These photos and stories are often used to derive sexual satisfaction from those who, for whatever reason, find such images arousing. These people even go as far as utilizing some of the arguments used by the first group: the possible repercussions of bringing the hammer down on what is perceived as child pornography, with these people going so far as to question what constitutes child pornography in the first place and whether or not the removal of "jailbait" images, which some argue as not being seen by most as being "child porn" in the classic sense, are even valid in the first place.

The third group, along with the second, features a wide variety of mentally questionable beings who are genuinely upset over being denied what seems (to them) to be "harmless" activities by what they see as "busybodies" and "puritans." The crackdowns and self-censoring could spill over to their subreddits, as the scope of valid targets deserving of a crackdown expand. Actual child porn today, a fictitious story involving rape tomorrow.

Most people see the second group as bad news, but given the ability to sequester oneself in their own personal selection of subreddits, it's easy to ignore them. There are plenty of people who've implored the Reddit admins to do something about this group, but those complaints often fell on deaf ears. The subreddit segregation combined with a laissez-faire attitude from the higher-ups created an atmosphere where it was only a matter of time before someone, somewhere, brought the hammer down.

---

There's a problem with free, unfettered speech on the Internet: It actually doesn't exist, and for good reason.

The Internet is a vast place with a largely western and a largely American bias, but many of the concepts enshrined within the U.S. Constitution, concepts that govern American lives, simply don't exist on the Internet. Even though users must abide by the laws of the country they're located in, the Internet itself is a lawless Mad Max landscape -- unless national or international entities have enough support and resources to enforce laws uniformly throughout most of the Internet landscape. The RIAA is doing its damnedest to become the Internet's first U.S. Marshal when it comes to actively seeking and punishing those accused of copyright infringement.

As a consequence, you make your own rules and regulations in regards to how you want things run. Nearly every website features basic Terms of Service and house rules that outline what you can and can't do. Free and unfettered speech means eliminating most of those rules, since they're by far and large restrictive of said free speech. This attracts people who don't want to be hemmed up or limited in their speech, but it also attracts users intent on abusing or perverting that free speech. It gets to the point where you want to ask if viewing child porn is considered "free speech" or not.

Here's the problem for Reddit and Advance Publications: free and unfettered speech brings in the good, but if left unchecked, brings in plenty of the bad. If the website's administrators refuse to root out instances of child porn and other such images that could be construed as such, on the grounds of free and unfettered speech for all members, it will eventually find itself under the duress of either legal action or federal investigation.

And that's where this comes in:

Senator Lamar Smith, lead sponsor of the currently dead SOPA bill you’ve heard so much about, has another bill in the works that uses Child Pornography as a screen to push through an amendment that’ll have your internet service provider tracking all of your financial dealings online. Each time you use a credit card, each time you read your bank statement, all of your IP information and your search history will be required by your ISP to be stored for 18 months at all times. This bill is H.R. 1981 and will have more dire consequences than SOPA or PIPA ever had the potential to have.

What it does is to amend several rules that have to do with Child Pornography and preventing it, the bill itself called the “Protecting Children From Internet Pornographers Act of 2011.”

This bill is the "think of the children" canard on steroids. The underlying fear is that a concerted effort to rid Reddit and the Internet of these unsavory elements could be the stepping stone to genuine suppression in other areas. SOPA/PIPA didn't pass in their current forms, but if they were to be wrapped in the cloak of protecting American citizens from pedophilic content and those who indulge in it, the unsuspecting public would be too caught up in a righteous storm of pitchforks and torches to realize exactly what they're signing.

A commercial provider of an electronic communication service shall retain for a period of at least one year a log of the temporarily assigned network addresses the provider assigns to a subscriber to or customer of such service that enables the identification of the corresponding customer or subscriber information under subsection (c)(2) of this section.

(1) to encourage electronic communication service providers to give prompt notice to their customers in the event of a breach of the data retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18 of the United States Code, in order that those effected can take the necessary steps to protect themselves from potential misuse of private information; and

(2) that records retained pursuant to section 2703(h) of title 18, United States Code, should be stored securely to protect customer privacy and prevent against breaches of the records.

Beyond your IP address, the above is very vague about what kind of "customer or subscriber information" will be retained for an entire year. There's talk that it's credit card information -- storing credit card info for an entire year sounds like a hacker and credit card theif's dream come true.

In the interests of preserving free and unfettered speech, the admins at Reddit largely turned a blind eye to a problem that has now attracted plenty of negative attention and the possibility of laws being crafted to obstinately crack down on the problem, laws that could be used to crack down on other things, including political speech deemed undesirable by the governing authorities. Reddit could have nipped the child porn and jailbait problem in the bud by discouraging and removing such images beforehand, but the horses are long out of the barn.

For those wondering why anyone should bother with shutting down a few "harmless" boards featuring "jailbait," an except from this PCMag article should shed some light:

The term "society" itself doesn't necessarily reflect the size or diversity of its population; instead, it represents a common set of values, beliefs, and institutions. The United States represents a society, as did the Fiji cannibals of 150 years ago. Or those that consider a 14-year-old in a bikini fair game for lewd comments.

It's not that far-fetched for some men to go from considering a 14-year-old in a bikini fair game for lewd comments to considering said 14-year-old fair game for sexual activity. One should ask whether they would go as far as tolerating several breeding grounds for sexual behavior towards the youngest and most vulnerable of society's members in the name of free, unfettered speech at all costs. Meanwhile, we should all ask ourselves if cracking down on this activity will end up being the crack that allows SOPA/PIPA's foot to squeeze through the Internet's front door.

“Freedom of speech is a good thing. Common sense, tact and dignity is even better. Bravo admins. Long overdue,” wrote one Reddit user.

“Common sense, tact, and dignity ARE NOT BETTER THAN FREEDOM OF SPEECH,” countered another user.

Is freedom of speech more important than removing environments that allow behaviors that sexually exploit and threaten children and young teens to thrive and propagate? That's a debate that would burn most discussion forums to the ground. I would have to say that they're all equally important and that each one has to be taken in moderation.

If I was a poor black kid I would first and most importantly work to make sure I got the best grades possible. I would make it my #1 priority to be able to read sufficiently. I wouldn’t care if I was a student at the worst public middle school in the worst inner city. Even the worst have their best. And the very best students, even at the worst schools, have more opportunities. Getting good grades is the key to having more options. With good grades you can choose different, better paths. If you do poorly in school, particularly in a lousy school, you’re severely limiting the limited opportunities you have.

And I would use the technology available to me as a student. I know a few school teachers and they tell me that many inner city parents usually have or can afford cheap computers and internet service nowadays. That because (and sadly) it’s oftentimes a necessary thing to keep their kids safe at home then on the streets. And libraries and schools have computers available too. Computers can be purchased cheaply at outlets like TigerDirect and Dell’s Outlet. Professional organizations like accountants and architects often offer used computers from their members, sometimes at no cost at all.

If I was a poor black kid I’d use the free technology available to help me study. I’d become expert at Google Scholar. I’d visit study sites like SparkNotes and CliffsNotes to help me understand books. I’d watch relevant teachings on Academic Earth, TED and the Khan Academy. (I say relevant because some of these lectures may not be related to my work or too advanced for my age. But there are plenty of videos on these sites that are suitable to my studies and would help me stand out.) I would also, when possible, get my books for free at Project Gutenberg and learn how to do research at the CIA World Factbook and Wikipedia to help me with my studies.

I would use homework tools like Backpack, and Diigo to help me store and share my work with other classmates. I would use Skype to study with other students who also want to do well in my school. I would take advantage of study websites like Evernote, Study Rails, Flashcard Machine, Quizlet, and free online calculators.

I wasn't raised a poor black kid. Perhaps a black kid who could have had a bit more than he was given from the start (don't we all?), but at no point did I feel or see myself as being poor. But when guys like these start assuming they can do what they believe ordinary black kids to somehow be incapable of doing, it fucking irks me. The smug, self-assured "oh I could have done that a lot better" attitude fucking irks me.

Like I said, I wasn't raised poor, so I'll use quotes around that word to make an important distinction. Hopefully that won't detract from the following message too much.

When I was a "poor" black kid, my parents made it my #1 priority to read, which in turn instilled a love of reading (and eventually, writing). Other kids didn't have that sort of parental motivation needed to push their kids to read better. It's a tall order to expect a struggling kid to get himself to read better when no one seems to want to help him.

When I was a "poor" black kid, I was lucky to have parents who worked to give me access to libraries and computers, back when other poor families didn't even have cable, let alone Internet service. Many poor families still don't have Internet service. Many poor families are computer illiterate. Many don't have access to a library or a community center with computers.

As a "poor" black kid, I had nary a clue about sources of information such as Cliff's Notes and Google Scholar. I had to be shown how to get to these resources by parents, relatives, teachers, etc. I wouldn't have been able to find them on my own except by sheer luck, never mind the nature of the Internet today.* To expect them to take advantage of these resources and deem them lazy and unmotivated when they can't take advantage of them reeks of intellectual dishonesty, to say the least.

Besides, I wouldn't have been able to study or share homework with other students online. Most of us didn't have computers. Or Internet access. Or both. Or had any motivation to study after dealing with our home lives.

Gene Marks, perhaps you shouldn't assume what you would do if you were this or that. Not even when you think you know the entire situation. Knowing the ins and outs about something doesn't give you permission to opine about what you'd do if you were in someone else's shoes. But plenty of people have already told you about that. So do us all a favor and knock it off.

*I grew up during what could be considered the final transformation of the Internet (or World Wide Web, as it was called then) into the Internet we all know, love and occasionally bitch about today. That was around the mid to late 1990s, back when my household used AOL floppies (not CDs, floppies) as coasters, Netscape was The Shit™, 56k was as fast as most households could have hoped to go, and AOL and Compuserve were the two main ways people logged onto those series of tubes. Memes did not exist, neither did 4Chan or YouTube. Google? No, Yahoo, Altavista and Lycos were the top search engines of the day. Damn, I feel old.

Plenty has gone down surrounding Dr. Casey Wardynski, newly minted superintendent of Huntsville City Schools. If it isn't the parade of new $100k+ hires during a time of proration and teacher layoffs, the drop-kicking of several school principals and a $500k push to higher educators funneled through the Broad Institute network, it's the sudden proposal to change the name of the newly built Lee High School and the controversial move of the New Century Technology School magnet. Yeah, the man seems to be shaking things up, for better or worse.

Okay, folks. You need some background.

• Ever since Wardynski got on board, there's been the sense of unilateral decision-making on part of the superintendent on a variety of issues. Case in point, the firing of Fillis McGhee, Jo Ann Thompson and Keith Henderson. Each case has their merits, and they all reek of an underlying motive somewhere. These moves are being hailed as a shakedown in corruption within HCS, except any genuine shakedown would have to involve sawing off dead wood off the White Street tree.
• Meanwhile, Wardynski's made a few of his friends welcome at their new home by throwing a total of $641,000 their way. And now he's chasing around a $550,000 $850,000 $1,700,000 four-year contract with Teach for America.* Gee, Casey, I thought we didn't have all that money to throw around. The schools are broke, teachers are getting let go right and left, and parents are tired of sending their kids off with their own rolls of toilet paper.
• Then there's the ham-handed way Wardynski's handling the renaming of the new Lee High School. Pulling down the Lee name without consulting anyone about it is a bit of a dick move that suggests unilateral action, Casey.**
• Even more ham-handed is the proposed move of New Century Technology from its current location within the crowded Columbia High School, located smack dab in Research Park, to the new Lee High School several miles east. Keep in mind Lee had its own magnet program already in place. Also keep in mind that New Century wanted its own campus for years. Butler or Westlawn would fit the bill for a new campus, as both are a lot closer to Redstone Arsenal and Research Park than Lee is.

There's also a not-so-subtle push for the school system to gain "unitary status." In short, that means HCS can finally throw off that decades-old desegregation order and start building and zoning schools the way they want without asking the U.S. Justice Department for permission. That doesn't sound so bad until you find out how the school system and the city in general is effectively segregated via north and south sides. I'll explain.

Thanks to the desegregation order, HCS can't build any new schools in the heavily white southeastern portions of the city. That means the city can't build another school to relieve the rampant overcrowding of Grissom High School, the only public high school in that particular area. That means the Tigers will have to put up with those portable classrooms out front.

Meanwhile, you have the heavily black northwestern and north-central portions of the city. The houses are cheaper, the people are working class and the schools are majority black, and therefore assumed to be complete shit by the Weatherly/Whiteburg crowd. Schools like J.O. Johnson and S.R. Butler High are operating at way under capacity, for a number of reasons. In Butler's case, all of the Redstone Arsenal students were rezoned for Columbia High when it first opened, drop-kicking Butler's enrollment numbers. Majority-to-minority school transfers rule the roost (guess in which direction), thereby placing further strain on the already over-capacity southeastern schools.

Given the property values north of University Drive, east of Sparkman & Jordan Drive and west of the Parkway are a bit paltry, to say the least, the schools there don't get as much funding as the schools in the more affluent Whitesburg/Weatherly/Jones Farm/Lilly Flagg areas. Unfortunately, there seems to be an inclination to blame a lack of proper school funding and the education opportunities that are thereby stifled on the somehow natural inferiority of black minds and their criminal, trouble-making tendencies. And I speak as a survivor of a school system where the administration and teaching faculty have already assigned stereotypical notions of who you are supposed to be and thereby act accordingly.

The only way to get out from under the order is to find a way to bring the ethnic composition of the schools across the city to a desirable enough level for the Justice Department to give an okay. So far, that has not happened. And thanks to the screwed-up ethnic demographics of the city in general, it never will, at least not for the next decade or two.

And that's why I ask about the way Fillis McGhee was fired. Yes, it's generally not a good idea to try to use your position to get favors for your kid, no matter how well it would benefit them in the end. However, keep in mind this was a black principal of a majority-white school in a majority-white part of town. I hate to lace up  the "Air Rs," but if Wardynski's shakedown is actually the first salvo of many signifying a movement to...ah..."put things back to where they were" or "bring back neighborhood schools" or some such thing...

Better bloggers than I have covered the ongoing HCS saga in greater detail. I present to you links to Geek Palaver, Merts Center Monitor and Redeye. Go read them.

* EDIT: Per Geek Palaver, the four-year Teach for America contract actually totals to approximately $1,700,000. I keep that in mind next time I hear about yet another round of teacher layoffs.


** EDIT: Wardynski had the "Lee High School" motif put back up after student and community outcry.

The following is not intended as an explanation of why "racism"* doesn't exist among blacks or as a ploy to absolve black individuals of prejudiced behavior. As long as there is a world where people can be compartmentalized and segmented into different groups based on appearance, location and tribal/ethnic affiliation, there will always be bigotry and prejudice.

My beef is how the concept of "black racism" is being used by predominately white commentators as a nullifying argument whenever the issue of institutionalized white prejudice against blacks is brought up. "Black racism" is supposed to be the mirror brought up to the face of black Americans whenever they attempt to explain (once more) how the effects of institutionalized white prejudice continue to harm them in a variety of ways.

As Abagond explains, the concept of "black racism" is more or less illusory and misleading:

Black racism is not a mirror image of white racism. It is not equal and opposite. Instead it is different in scale and kind:

Blacks lack institutional power. They do not, for the most part, control

• the banks,
• the police,
• the courts,
• the schools,
• the hospitals,
• the newspapers,
• the film industry,
• the fashion industry,
• the labour market,
• the housing market

and on and on. Instead whites do. So much so that their racism affects rates of black unemployment, income, life expectancy, education, segregation and incarceration. Blacks do not even begin to have that kind of power over whites. If wealth is power, as it largely is in America, then whites as a whole are a hundred times more powerful than blacks (that is double what it was before the Great Recession). Even though the president is black, he cannot openly help blacks without being accused of racism.

Internalized racism: The racism among blacks is mostly directed against other blacks, especially against one’s self. Blacks are subject to much of the same racist brainwashing as whites, particularly through television and school. According to one test of racism (the IAT), 42% of blacks are racist in favour of whites!
Blacks understand whites way better than whites understand blacks:

• Because they have to just to feed their families in a society that is mostly white.
• Because they read white books, watch white television, receive white educations, work at white companies, etc. They have to deal with whites. Meantime whites can avoid dealing with blacks or having to take them seriously.

This makes it hard for blacks to stereotype and dehumanize whites to a serious degree.

• Blacks have not committed serious injustices that require racist whitewashing.
• Blacks do not build their sense of self-worth on looking down on whites.
• There is nothing like a black n-word for whites. So much so that most of the commenters on this blog who use racial slurs against whites are themselves white!
• There is nothing like the black Klan. Some whites think the Black Panthers were like that, but they never went into white neighbourhoods to spread terror and lynch white people.

Blacks do commit hate crimes and so on, but to think black racism is equal and opposite to white racism is to miss the nature of both white racism and black racism. White racism is institutional and cultural and a hundred times more powerful. Black racism is personal and, to a large degree, is a weakened form of white racism.

The use of "black racism" as a weapon in heated debate isn't something new, as explained by commentator "sam":

It is very simple to call black radicals racists in USA. That tactic has been used at least since 1950′s against any black movement, person, or this blog, which has been fighting against the racism in USA. It is the easiest and cheapest and fastest way to discredict anybody and very effective.

I don't expect those who are comfortably wedded to the notion of "black racism" being an all-encompassing phenomenon to "get it." Cultivating the notion of "white victimhood" in response to dwindling social power and the loss of their societal punching bags and relief valves requires not listening to any argument that challenges their notions of "black racism." Once someone realizes what a complete crock "black racism" is, the notion of victimhood simply falls apart.

On the other hand:

“bottom line is you can make me the villian if thats what you want to do, but black racism does exist and it is growing like a cancer among some blacks.”

Notice the part, "bottom line is you can make me the villian..."

Some people will feel like they're being chastised or chided over the flawed concept of "black racism." They will reflexively shut down and begin repeating "I'm not the bad guy, you black racist you" meme over and over again until the argument ends. Some people are just like this. Is it our job to find more effective ways of breaking the flaws to them gently? Personally, I don't think so, but others may disagree.

The need for maintaining the black boogeymen as a national sideshow is pretty damn strong. Otherwise you wouldn't see the Tea Party's attempts to mold the New Black Panther party into the black equivalent of the Ku Klux Klan. To the point, groups of black men nationwide will never receive the implicit and unspoken sanction of most parts of the nation to burn down white homes, churches or schools, or to drag white men off the back of pickups or hang them for sport. You won't see the New Black Panthers or anyone remotely like them marching through Main Street in a display of intimidation towards whites. It won't happen because the existing power structure in this country will not allow it to happen.

As I mentioned in the last blog post, some whites are simply afraid of the possibility that any sort of concrete black movement will soon translate into a "black revenge," where blacks seeking compensation for the cumulative effects of institutionalized white prejudice will start by taking away white wealth and social privileges. Some whites see themselves as being a couple steps and one charismatic black leader away from being herded into ghettos. Considering past history, some whites subconsciously feel they're more than deserving of whatever fate they receive. And that may explain the reflexive defense mechanism for issues such as reparations and reconciliation. Perhaps that's one of the reasons Reconstruction was quickly put to bed, and a reason why the concept of a successful black-led nation seems abhorrent to many.

*I never did like the word "racism," as it tends to verbally categorize people of color into different "sub-species" of human being. Such a thing makes it easier for the so-called "predominant race" to treat others as sub-human or non-human. The terms "ethnic background" and "ethnic groups" lend themselves to a more equal footing, putting everyone "on the same page," you may say. That's just my opinion on the issue.

When it comes to blogs that cater somewhat to black American audiences, you'll always have people who feel the need to espouse their opinion on issues that largely involve black Americans, without giving any thought to the context of the discussion or recognizing how they overestimate their own understanding of the discussion at hand. The only thing that matters to such people is that they have their opinions "out there," as they believe they are entitled to under the concepts of free speech.

A number of blogs have suffered from individuals who stumble in said discussions and dictate their own opinions, drawn from experiences that may be alien or inapplicable to the situations alluded to in the discussions. They expect everyone else to stop and listen, thereby becoming the center of attention by presenting themselves as a sage bearer of advice. Such advice usually comes from a perspective that's had zero experience with the discussion subjects or anything remotely similar.

Then there are those who have no intention but to disrupt the flow of normal discourse or to bring the discussion so far off track that any hope of coming back to the original discussion is soon lost. Killing debate through noise keeps people from discussing, sharing and generating ideas and solutions to problems that plague the black community, especially on blogs, forums and other relatively open mediums for discourse.

Ankhesen Mié lays out the ground rules for her blog and even goes so far as to patiently explain why her moderation policies are set up the way they are. Below is commentator M. Gibson's explanation as to why certain individuals feel duty-bound to stumble into conversations with nary a clue:

I think some whites stay to appropriate the words and the sentiment behind our frustration. But they absorb nothing, so it changes nothing. They learn to speak the language of diversity but its life-changing effect is lost on them. They’re overly opinionated; believing their words come strictly from an ‘Objective’ point of view. Because they know how we POC tend to allow emotion to cloud the issue. Blind to their own conditioning they will call you a race-baiting so and so for calling their so-called conditioning into question. You’re nothing but a minority in their eyes and therefore your opinion really doesn’t matter.

To them you obviously have a chip on your shoulder and should be approached in that light. Their privilege/ignorance hangs on every word; it seasons every point they try to make. They cannot empathize with the person of color (the beginning of wisdom) and frankly they can’t understand why they should. It’s why I asked Jas0n why was he here because he consistently failed to step beyond the white narrative. With each new argument he always seemed to take the side favorable to the very thing you called out. It wasn’t about agreeing with you, it was about his lack of empathy. He couldn’t put himself in the shoes of POC and so he was always on the outside looking in.

"So when white people come here and give me their opinions on issues they cannot fully and usually don't want to understand, comment deletion is often imminent. This blog isn't for them. It's not here for their benefit, and 90% of the time, what they have to say doesn't help the cause."

“Why is it always about you people?” they'll ask. "Don't just focus on race all the time," they insist. Sadly, they fail to see the forest for the trees, for they can’t understand why any blog would focus on POC when there are more important issues to explore. In this way they can control the narrative to suit their ends. Pretty soon it’s all about them isn’t it.

To put it in a not-so-polite manner, it's a manifestation of "Attention Whore" syndrome on a digital scale: the drive to dominate the discussion regardless of the topic, combined with a lack of desire to understand the subject matter. It's the "pretty white girl shedding a tear in public after being embarrassed/corrected/shamed by a peer of color" ploy -- enter with several casually flung tone-deaf assessments of the situation with "solutions" for the poor people in the discussion to faithfully follow, only to cry bias and "reverse racism/black racism/whatever admonishment towards blacks" when you're asked to stop hijacking the discussion.

"Slavery, racism, and segregation are in the past. We shouldn't talk about them anymore. Talking about racism is what keeps it alive."

Boilerplate dismissals such as the one above are what keeps racism alive. Dismissal fosters apathy, which in turn fosters an environment where people can marginalize and discredit other voices with ease, without consequence. Telling someone they shouldn't talk about racism anymore because it makes you feel uncomfortable is the height of tone-deafness.

Remember the words of John Cole. Sometimes, it's best to simply step back, shut the fuck up and listen. You might learn a thing or two.

While reading an AL.com story about concerned citizens meeting to discuss and plan Birmingham's future, I ran across this nugget that's a bit of a theme among some dissatisfied with the Magic City's current shape:

They should talk about B'ham's past (pre 1963). A lot more pleasant.
Be nice if they could revert back to that time. I just don't see it happening, which is why I left.

I've never known any black person from Birmingham to talk pleasant about the city as a whole pre-1960s, unless it involved their own neighborhoods. That kinda narrows down the pool of people most likely to say the above, trolls excluded.

The 1960s are a dividing line between the pleasant and idyllic Birmingham some whites knew and loved, and the depressed, crime-ridden shit pit they believe it turned into. You can figure out why on your own.

This is the reason why Birmingham abdicated any chance of out-Atlanta-ing Atlanta. Because while Atlanta was willing to momentarily set aside most of its racial unpleasantries (and woo-boy, were there plenty) in the greater pursuit of Greatness™, divisive and corrosive politics put Birmingham on the same road as Detroit, in terms of urban vs. suburban strife and non-cooperation.

Nostalgia is one thing, but pining about days gone by while ignoring opportunities to create future greatness is not only an exercise in futility, but just plain stupid, in my opinion. Instead of whining about the new CrossPlex being built in an area you're "scared" to go in, push for new events hosted at the facility and improvements made to the safety and livability of the surrounding area. In other words, stop whining over how the CrossPlex should have been built in Hoover, Vestavia or some other toney suburb with a more favorable color mixture.

And on a conspiracy theory note, I have a strange feeling that the ultimate plan is to shift the economic and metropolitan center of influence away from Birmingham. If Tuscaloosa and Montgomery could become the new metropolitan powerhouses while Birmingham languishes Decatur-style, that would suit the T-town and Goat Hill folks just fine. After all, it's their time to shine.

With a buying power of nearly $1 trillion annually, if African-Americans were a country, they'd be the 16th largest country in the world.

The number of African-American households earning $75,000 or higher grew by almost 64%, a rate close to 12% greater than the change in the overall population's earning between 2000 and 2009. This continued growth in affluence, social influence and household income will continue to impact the community's economic power.

African-Americans make more shopping trips than all other groups, but spend less money per trip. African-Americans in higher income brackets, also spend 300% more in higher-end retail grocers more than any other high income household.

Black people have no idea how much economic power they wield and how they can literally shape this country's trajectory by putting it to good use. One of the most depressing observations I've made concerning black folks' spending habits is how we, as a community and as a people, tend not to support our own centers of economic activity to the extent we support others. Black-owned and operated businesses are few and far between, and they often don't last long for both a lack of support and this odd expectation that instead of conducting business/consumer translations like others, we deserve "the hookup" based on ethnic kinship. What's left are Arab and Indian-owned "quik-marts," Korean hair supply shops, fast-food joints with black staffing but non-black ownership and the ubiquitous title loan shops run by whites.

We also suffer from a bit of the "white man's ice is colder" thought pattern, leading us to believe that our own entrepreneurial efforts are not good enough and only the products and services rendered by other people are good, in a sense. It's something that will likely take a generation or more of positive reinforcement and mindset change to undo.

Generally speaking, instead of spending our hard-earned dollars with other people, where seeing the returns from such economic activity back to our communities is a faint and distance chance, why not start our own businesses and spend with our own people? That way, we can reinvest in our own communities, instead of relying on others to return the money we've given them in consumer transactions in the form of positive socioeconomic improvements.

If you ever looked at a road map of the Birmingham metro area, you'll notice instead of having a full loop like all other respectable cities, Birmingham has a V-shaped bypass serving the southern "Over The Mountain" portions of the city and outlying areas. This is Interstate 459, built in 1984 to spare east- and west-bound travelers from 1-65 the indignity of traveling through Birmingham, and more importantly, the much-maligned I-65/I-20/I-59 interchange known as "Malfunction Junction." It's one of the few roadways in the U.S. where you end up traveling on the wrong side of the road on purpose. And it eats trucks, tankers specifically.

After I-459 was built, bupkis. The fine minds at ALDOT thought about finishing up the loop, and promptly fell asleep for the next 20 years or so. This is what ALDOT does. They think up half-baked and half-assed solutions, and then they sleep on them for about 20 to 30 years. Eventually, they'll wake up and get around to building the damn thing, which usually takes anywhere from a speedy 4 to 5 years or perhaps another 10 to 15. Either way, you get a highway that's at least 5 to 10 years behind the curve, a question that should have been answered 5 to 10 years ago. It took them about 30 years to realize Huntsville needed an interstate highway and that Decatur wasn't gonna break past 65,000 in population anytime soon.

Needless to say, I-459's been a boon to the once-rural but now thoroughly suburban areas of southeast Jefferson County and northwest Shelby County, and not so much for the areas around Bessemer and McCalla. The main issue is how I-459, like most urban and suburban loops, enabled urban sprawl along and beyond its boundaries.

Now let's look at northern and northwestern Jefferson County. It's still largely rural as all get out, thanks to the vast majority of suburban development happening towards the southeast. When it comes to trendy suburbia, west Jefferson County gets no love. Well, ALDOT's woken up from yet another long nap to kick-start construction of the Northern Beltline.


And here it is, the Northern Beltline, a.k.a I-422. Approximately 52 miles and $4.7 billion dollars of blacktop boondoggle. That comes out to approximately $90 million per mile. At this point, you'd think the road was gonna be paved with solid gold. Also note the hilariously wide arc of the overall route, staying well outside of Birmingham city limits for the most part, passing through a collection of stereotypical small towns and parcels of land owned by USS Real Estate, Jim Walter Resources and several other local interests. Little wonder about the price tag.

The roadway technically begins where I-459 ends, trudging its way through miles of backwoods Alabama landscape and underfed small towns, eventually connecting with I-22 at Graysville, a sleepy small town that, once upon a time, had exactly one traffic light. After passing through Mayberry, the Northern Beltline suddenly grows another branch, headed southwest towards Graysville's larger speed trap cousin, Adamsville. From there, the Beltline continues a northern arc across I-65, Pinson, Centerpoint and a number of other small cities until it finally ends....not at I-459 in Roebuck. Nope, instead it terminates somewhere near the otherwise insignificant city of Argo, about 10 miles away from I-459. And there's some talk about the Beltline extending further into St. Clair County so it meets with I-20. No wonder people are scared it's gonna grow into an "out-of-control" spiral.

The only benefit to the Beltline is the ability to direct truck traffic around the city and away from the aforementioned Malfunction Junction. And it remains seen if law enforcement and ALDOT will have the attention span and the testicular fortitude to enforce a ban on through traffic for trucks.

So, will building start at I-459? Nope. It's gonna start somewhere around here (skip to 5:55). In the middle of nowhere. There's an analogy somewhere, I just can't put my finger on it.

The Northern Beltline has the distinct displeasure of stomping through several fragile ecosystems made more so by years of industrial pollution. Black Warrior Riverkeeper and the Southern Environmental Law Center are not pleased about the Beltline coming to fruition. As much noise is made over environmental affairs in the state, moneyed interests and big industry usually wins out.


My biggest concern is sprawl. Living outside of Atlanta's I-285 perimeter's given me a front-row seat to how suburban sprawl plays out when left unchecked. Left to their own devices, property developers will build communities and shopping centers with absolutely no regard to traffic flow and commute times -- that's not their problem. Given that and Atlanta's "fuck a grid, mufucka" road layout (a Southern tradition), and you're left with one of the most excruciating commuting experiences this side of L.A. At least Atlanta has MARTA rail -- it helps a little.

It's a big reason why U.S. 280 remains a jawdropping clusterfuck of stop-and-go retail and residential traffic. It's why, in a few years' time, Shelby County commuters will clammor for the widening of Grant's Mill Road, a roadway that happens to cross over Lake Purdy, a large water reservoir for the city of Birmingham. If the Northern Beltline is built, property developers will go nuts. And when that happens...

Before plunging face-first into a decades-long project answering a question that should had been answered back in 1980, let's first try to learn the lessons of Atlanta's I-285, if only to avoid GDOT's screwups and crib their better ideas...nah. Chances are we'll multiply their screwups by a factor of 5 and pocket the kickbacks and graft that come from it.