Category Archives: Race

August 24, 2011 · 8:01 pm

The Help Takes the Box Office, Becomes Second Viable Best Picture Contender of 2011

I loved the book and I loved the movie…

I’m glad to see the film of “The Help” getting such a great response and Oscar talk- especially for Viola Davis.

I really don’t quite get the criticism.  I don’t see how it glorifies Jim Crow or racism.  Quite the opposite.  One of the points is that the only way these black women’s stories could be told in the South in 1963, was anonymously and if a white women helped tell them.  The risks they took in just speaking to her were pretty clear to me.  As was the racism and danger of the times.

If anything, “The Help” shows the evils of racism and Jim Crow – and the Junior League.  Just kidding about the League.  Kind of…this does really show how it enforced conformity…

I was around in the South in 1963.  I think some of the people who criticize this film/book either weren’t there or are looking at the situation through a 2011 lens without the appropriate filters….

And the critic, who tweated her opinions on Twitter in a running stream while she watched the film, has no validity.  Anyone who texts during a movie is obviously not taking the time to absorb it or pay attention to the arch of the story.  And has no damn manners….

If Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey support it, that’s good enough for me….

From Sasha Stone at AwardsDaily.com:

Be it controversial or not there is no denying the power of The Help so much so that it is lighting up the box office through word of mouth.  The publicity has been off the hook as well, perhaps not playing to the blogerati but hitting right at the heart of white audiences, right smack dab in the middle of Blind Side territory.

I was sitting at a dinner with about six women (white, upper middle class) and the first thing that was brought up was “have you seen The Help? Wasn’t that so good?”  The conversation then checked in with who hadn’t yet seen it.  After it died down I brought up the subject of race.  Needless to say it didn’t go over well.  What did come out of the conversation was how timely the film was in terms of Hispanic nannies (do we say Hispanic or Latina?) and how there should be some rumination on this idea of what determines family and what doesn’t.

You can’t tell people who responded emotionally to a film like this that they shouldn’t like it because it isn’t politically correct, or that it’s offensive to African Americans and that any response to that is an endorsement of said repression and the perpetuating of the Jim Crow racism that has and continues to oppress multitudes.  I’m not even saying I disagree.  But I am acknowledging the emotional power of the film, just as I’m now acknowledging that a movie that does this well at the box office, has this kind of emotional heat, plays to women the way it does, has a very very good chance at winding up in the number 1 spot on AMPAS ballots.  Like last year’s winner proved, the heart wants what it wants. No matter if it was a stuttering King or not – the emotional response is real.

What makes an accidental Best Picture nominee today? It’s usually a movie that somehow slips under or over the blogerati, and/or critics (mind you, The Help received many good reviews, most notably from Entertainment Weekly’s Owen Gleibermann) to become a hit and a strong awards contender DESPITE the shunning by the elite (this theory was offered up on our podcast recording this morning by Jeff Wells).  In other words, a good movie is a good movie is a good movie.

When you have a screening at the White House by Michelle Obama and a very public endorsement by Ms. Oprah Winfrey herself, you can pretty much forget any sort of pubic shaming of the film; it has now been deemed perfect acceptable by two of the country’s strongest and most powerful black women.

It is also important to remember that voting is done privately and anonymously.  That keeps it fairly honest so that no one is necessarily going to vote for what they SHOULD vote for – not for the best film, but the film they liked the most, starring characters they cared about the most.  When it gets right down to it, the heart is the most influential organ when it comes to Oscar voting.

Therefore, I see The Help clocking in as 2011′s second truly strong and formidable Oscar contender (plus, when you get a load of the publicity team behind it you will see it can’t be beat).  I count the first as Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris, another film that is receiving strong word of mouth, is Woody Allen’s biggest money maker to date and feels more timely than ever, as its message is about looking to the future and not trying to live in the past.

via The Help Takes the Box Office, Becomes Second Viable Best Picture Contender of 2011 | Awards Daily.

Leave a comment

Filed under Movies, Race

Tagged as , , , , ,

May 9, 2011 · 11:30 pm

Leonard Pitts: How two busloads of kids changed America

I’m really looking forward to this documentary…

As usual, a great column from Leonard Pitts:

WASHINGTON — Fifty years later.

This morning, if all goes according to plan, a group of college students will board a bus here, bound for New Orleans. The young people in the group represent diverse heritages — a Mexican-American guy born in Yucatan, a white girl from Santa Monica, a black girl studying journalism in Tallahassee. The fact of them traveling together will be unremarkable.

Fifty years ago.

A group of college students boarded two buses here, bound for New Orleans. They were joined by members of the African-American press, and officials of the Congress of Racial Equality, including its national director, James Farmer, who had organized the journey. Six of the riders were white, 12, black. The fact of their traveling together would prove incendiary.

Fifty years later.

There will be 40 students on this commemorative ride, chosen from more than a thousand applicants. They will spend a little over a week rolling across an America vastly different from the America of 1961. In the new America, mom ‘n’ pop have gone out of business, driven into retirement by Subway and Wal-Mart, telephones are portable, computers are ubiquitous and the son of an African from Kenya is president of the United States.

The students are traveling in part to publicize Freedom Riders, a documentary that will air on PBS’ American Experience program beginning May 16. They will go where a bus was burned, people were beaten and the guilty imprisoned the innocent. They will share the journey with many of the original Freedom Riders, men and women now well into their 70s and 80s, and absorb lessons in the nonviolent tactics and philosophies that helped make the old America into the new.

You wonder what that will be like. It is always difficult for young people to imagine old people young, to look upon aged faces and experienced eyes and glimpse there any kinship of spirit or reflection of themselves. It is perhaps more difficult, having come of age in the new America, to envision the old, to gaze upon a landscape of Subways and Wal-Marts and see just beneath it the ghost of the Eat-A-Bite diner or Hardwick’s Hardware, and the metal sign creaking gently in the Dixie breeze, an arrow pointing to the back of the building, beneath the single damning word, Colored.

MORE:   Leonard Pitts: How two busloads of kids changed America – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

1 Comment

Filed under Politics, Race, Uncategorized

Tagged as , ,

February 10, 2011 · 7:41 pm

Cruel and Unequal, Sojourners Magazine/February 2011

Another great article…

Do you think if Lindsey Lohan had been a poor African-American girl she would still be walking around free?  Or Paris Hilton?

See the key paragraph- with my emphasis in bold blue….

A vast new racial undercaste now exists in America, though their plight is rarely mentioned. Obama won’t mention it; the Tea Party won’t mention it; media pundits would rather talk about anything else. The members of the undercaste are largely invisible to those of us who have jobs, live in decent neighborhoods, and zoom around on freeways, passing by the virtual and literal prisons in which they live.

But here are the facts: There are more African-American adults under correctional control today — in prison or jail, on probation or parole — than were enslaved in 1850, a decade before the Civil War began. In major urban areas such as Chicago, Oama’s hometown, the majority of working-age African-American men have criminal records and are thus subject to legalized discrimination for the rest of their lives. Millions of people in the United States, primarily poor people of color, are denied the very rights supposedly won in the civil rights movement: the right to vote, to serve on juries, and to be free from discrimination in employment, housing, access to education, and public benefits. Branded “criminals” and “felons,” such people now find themselves relegated to a permanent second-class status. They live in a parallel social universe: the other America, where they will stay for the rest of their lives.

We, as a nation, are in deep denial about how this came to pass. On the rare occasions when the existence of “them” — the others, the ghetto dwellers, those locked up and locked out — is publicly acknowledged, standard excuses are trotted out. We’re told black culture, bad schools, poverty, and broken homes are to blame. Almost no one admits: We declared war. We declared a war on the most vulnerable people in our society and then blamed them for the wreckage.

And yet that is precisely what we did. The so-called War on Drugs has driven the quintupling of our prison population in a few short decades. The vast majority of the startling increase in incarceration in America is traceable to the arrest and imprisonment of poor people of color for nonviolent, drug-related offenses. Families have been torn apart, and young lives shattered, as parents grieve the loss of loved ones to the system, often hiding their grief under a cloak of shame.

Politicians claim that the enemy in this war is a thing — drugs — not a group of people. The facts prove otherwise.

Studies consistently show that people of all colors use and sell drugs at remarkably similar rates, yet in some states African-American men have been admitted to prison on drug charges at a rate up to 57 times higher than white men. In some states, 80 to 90 percent of all drug offenders sent to prison have been African Americans. The rate of Latino imprisonment has been staggering as well. Although the majority of illegal drug users and dealers are white, three-fourths of all people imprisoned for drug offenses have been black and Latino.

 

 

 

 

 

via Cruel and Unequal, Sojourners Magazine/February 2011.

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics, Race, Social Justice, The Economy

January 26, 2011 · 8:34 pm

Revisiting The Renaissance In ‘Harlem Is Nowhere’ : NPR

This sounds fascinating…

Also from NPR:

Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts has had Harlem on her mind since she was a high school student in Houston reading the work of Jean Toomer, Ann Petry, Zora Neale Hurston, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, Langston Hughes and others. In 2002, a recent Harvard graduate, she moved into an apartment without a kitchen on 130th near Lenox. Her first book, Harlem Is Nowhere, is a tender, improvisational memoir of several years spent exploring the myths of this capital of African America and the realities of its 21st-century incarnation.

Rhodes-Pitts spends hours in a branch library on 135th Street, reading of the beginnings of Harlem as a farm suburb settled in the 1880s, its transformation in 1905 when the black migrations from the South began to fill its borders, and the point in 1925 when Alain Locke defined Harlem as a physical center that “focuses a people,” and set the stage for the Harlem Renaissance. She goes on a walking tour with tourists, attends community meetings about rezoning and muses on African street vendors, empty lots, chalk messages scribbled on sidewalks and relics of times past, like James Van Der Zee’s formal Depression-era photographs and the overstuffed scrapbooks of the early 20th-century eccentric Alexander Gumby.

From an older woman named Ms. Minnie, who lives in her building, she learns how to be a caring neighbor. Ms. Minnie is from a black town in South Carolina and at one point confides that her maiden name was Sojourner. “She looked me squarely in the eye before continuing,” Rhodes-Pitts writes. “That’s not a slave name.”

The author borrows her title from Ralph Ellison’s essay about post World War II Harlem as a metaphoric space in which “the major energy of the imagination goes not into creating works of art, but to overcome the frustration of social discrimination.”

More:   Revisiting The Renaissance In ‘Harlem Is Nowhere’ : NPR.

Leave a comment

Filed under Books, History, New York, Race, Social Commentary

January 24, 2011 · 7:00 pm

Rights group blasts US justice over racial gap | Raw Story

Something just isn’t right with our Criminal Justice system…

No focus on rehabilitation or drug rehab- unless you are Lindsey Lohan.

A leading rights group slammed the United States on Monday for “overwhelming” racial disparities in its criminal justice system, and shortcomings in its approach to immigration and anti-terrorism measures.

Human Rights Watch said in its annual world report that in the US prison system — which still has the world’s largest population of 2,297,400 inmates, according to the latest figures from June 2009 — black non-Hispanic males are incarcerated at a rate more than six times that of white non-Hispanic males.

The disparity “cannot be accounted for solely by differences in criminal conduct,” said HRW in its 2011 World Report.

In 2009, one in 10 black males aged 25-29 were in prison, and for Hispanic males the figure was one in 25 — for white males the figure was one in 64.

HRW also highlighted a number of positive moves in the United States to address racial disparities, noting including a new law that promises to reduce in the sentencing of cocaine offenders.

 

“US citizens enjoy a broad range of civil liberties and have recourse to a strong system of independent federal and state courts, but continuing failures — notably in the criminal justice and immigration systems and in counterterrorism law and policy — mar its human rights record,” said HRW.

via Rights group blasts US justice over racial gap | Raw Story.

Leave a comment

Filed under Politics, Race, Social Commentary

January 17, 2011 · 8:34 am

Chapter 46: The Evolution of One Southern Liberal or Some Thoughts on Martin Luther King Day | My Southern Gothic Life

I have a new post up on my other blog.

Here’s an excerpt and a link to the full post…

As we approach the Holiday recognizing the contributions of Dr. King, I always tend to think about where we were, where we are and where we have yet to go.  To me, this is a day to stop and think. And remember.

As a Southerner of a certain age, I just can’t let this day pass without comment.  I don’t see how anyone of my generation can.

I grew up in the South before integration and during the Civil Rights Movement.  I’m not sure if I even spoke to a black person, other than our maid, before the schools were integrated when I was in the 5th grade.  People seem to forget the South in the early 1960′s was like South Africa under apartheid.  It was a very separate and scary place.  Everyone–and I mean everyone– had their place and society tried to keep them in it.

I think the late, great Molly Ivins said it best.  Molly once wrote:  ”I believe all Southern liberals come from the same starting point — race.  Once you figure out they are lying to you about race, you start to question everything.”

via Chapter 46: The Evolution of One Southern Liberal or Some Thoughts on Martin Luther King Day | My Southern Gothic Life.

2 Comments

Filed under Danville, History, Holidays, My Journey, Politics, Race, Social Commentary

Tagged as , ,

January 12, 2011 · 5:44 pm

Koch Groups End Successful Integration Program In NC

If anyone still thinks the Tea Party Movement is really a grassroots effort, read this…

It’s all about providing cover for Big money Conservatives trying to influence politics and society to roll back the clock to a whiter, less diverse world…

We have to interact with as broad a range of people as possible if we are ever to truly understand each other, identify and build on our commonalities and lose the fear of those who may be different from us.  Of course, that’s not what these guys want….

And there is also the importance of  building an education system that allows everyone a chance to learn and succeed- not just the white and the wealthy…

From ThinkProgress.org…

Today in the Washington Post, reporter Stephanie McCrummen detailed how a right-wing campaign in the Wake County area of North Carolina has taken over the school board with a pledge to end a very successful socio-economic integration plan. The integration plan, which created thriving schools in poor African-American parts of the school district along with achieving diversity in schools located in wealthy white enclaves, was a model for the nation. However, Americans for Prosperity (AFP), the Tea Party group founded and funded by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch, worked with local right-wing financier (and AFP board member) Art Pope to fundamentally change Wake County’s school board:

More:   ThinkProgress » Fulfilling Father’s Campaign To Segregate Public Schools, Koch Groups End Successful Integration Program In NC.

Leave a comment

Filed under Education, North Carolina, Politics, Race, The South

January 7, 2011 · 9:07 pm

My Thoughts: Why Politics Matter

I’m tired of people saying Politics doesn’t matter and tuning out of the Political process.  Not only is this an abdication of responsibility, it’s stupid.

Politics does matter and the votes taken in various elected bodies do impact everyone’s  life.

In fact, Political decisions impact almost every aspect of day-to-day life.  Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Drafting young men during the Vietnam War was a political decision as was ending the Draft.
  2. Going to War with Iraq and Afghanistan was a political decision.
  3. Creating Social Security and Medicare was a political decision.  Destroying them could be, too.
  4. Ending Slavery was a political decision.
  5. Granting Women the right to Vote was a political decision.
  6. How much money your hometown gets for roads and economic development is a political decision.
  7. The books and curriculum used to educate your children in public schools is a political decision.
  8. Financial Aid for College is a political decision.
  9. Whether or not you can park your car in your yard or put a ratty sofa on your front porch is a political decision.
  10. How much you pay in property, sales and income taxes are a political decision.
  11. Whether your food is safe and how this safety is assured is a political decision.
  12. Whether you have adequate Health Care is a Political decision.

These are just a few impacts off the top of my head.  So when I hear people say they aren’t voting or that one side is as bad as the other, or that it just doesn’t matter, it pisses me off.

Admittedly, I am passionate about this…I used to work in Politics and spent a good deal of time in Washington and Richmond.  I have been “behind the curtain.”  I’ve smoked cigarettes over cocktails at the Congressional Club with now Speaker John Boehner and ridden the back roads of Virginia with Senator John Warner.  I know neither side is perfect and I well know how the “other side”-for whom I used to work- manipulates the process and puts out false information.  I’ve seen the decline in civility by both sides and made my well-known choice.

I came to the conclusion that the Republicans look backwards with fear while the Democrats look forward with hope.  I’ve also reached the conclusion the Republicans cater to the wealthy and Corporate elite- as do the Democrats to a lesser degree.  This is an informed, fact-based decision I made as part of my personal journey.  You can disagree with me, but you can’t call me uniformed or accuse me of not thoroughly examining the issues to reach my decisions.

I also think we have a moral obligation in America to ensure our elected officials don’t forget the poor, the sick, the hungry, the elderly, college students hungry for learning but limited in funds and the homeless.  I think one of the main purposes of government is to ensure we have safe, reliable transportations– by road, by air and most urgently by train.  I think the government should level the playing field by allowing those who are born to less have the same opportunities as those who are born with more.  I think the government should ensure our food supply is safe, but not over burden local growers.  I think a lot of things…

I don’t expect everyone to agree with me, but I do expect them to be involved and to make fact-based decisions.  I can respect that…

I can’t respect people who tune out facts or don’t do their own due diligence.

Here are a few things to keep in mind:

  1. Several Elections have been decided recently based on just a few votes difference.
  2. When given the facts, more people support the policies of the Democratic party, but more Republicans vote.
  3. Not voting for the Legislative branch of Government impacts the Executive and Judicial Branches.  Elected officials appoint and approve Supreme Court justices. Sometimes Judges decide Elections.  It’s all connected.
  4. When you vote, you have an obligation to know what the person you are voting for really stands for- not that they are the cutest or most telegenic or that you just know their name or Party.

For Democracy to work, you must have an informed, active electorate.  I hope people are paying attention to what is going on in Washington, the State Houses and the Supreme Court.  These decisions do matter and do impact your lives.

The Elites count on people being confused, misinformed and lazy when-and if- they vote.  It’s up to us to prove them wrong.  We haven’t done a great job the last year or so…

I may be dreaming, but here are a few things that I think would help rectify the situation:

  1. Get the big money out of politics.  Block Corporate donations and self-financing wealthy candidates by leveling the playing field.  Move to Public Financing of Elections with each qualifying Candidate having the same amount of money to spend.
  2. Require the Television and Radio stations to run an equal amount of adds for each qualifying candidate and/or Political Party.  Remember, the airwaves are Public Property that is leased to the media.  We need to make them do their civic duty and not just profit off a broken system.
  3. The media needs to do its job and check facts and call attention to mis-representations of facts- and lies- by all Candidates, Politicians and Parties.  I would love to re-implement the Fairness Doctrine- if for no other reason to put Fox News out of business- but that is impractical.
  4. Separate News from Entertainment.  The line has blurred too much….
  5. End Corporate monopolies of the Media.  Limit the number of media outlets that any one Corporation can own.
  6. Encourage people to check the facts on reputable web sites and from other non-mainstream media sources.  Form non-partisan grass-roots groups to educate them on how to do it…
  7. Enforce the Separation of Church and State.  Churches and Religious organizations who become involved in Politics should lose their tax exempt status.
  8. Encourage the growth of Third-and Fourth- Parties by making it easier for their candidates to get on the ballot and have appropriate funding.
  9. Require a fixed number of debates for all offices.  Don’t let politicians hide behind adds.  Put the public and media spot light on them all.
  10. End the revolving door between elected officials and lobbyists.  Elected Officials should not be able to lobby their former colleagues.  This is how the  insider Boys Club perpetuates itself.
  11. Develop and enforce ethics rules at all levels of Government.  With real, still penalties and not slaps on the hands.  Independent boards should manage inquiries and not political cronies.
  12. In Politics, just like in other areas of life, we need to encourage civility and reasonable debate- not encourage blood sport and boorish behavior.
  13. Make it easier to vote.  We need to find a secure way to vote via the internet.  We need to extend and expand early voting.
  14. We need to be confident all voting machines are secure and not subject to manipulation.
  15. Focus on encouraging more voters, not suppressing voters.

We need to encourage people to pay attention by restoring trust in the media and elected officials who represent the Public Trust.

This is not a game.

It is not a reality TV show.

Bottom Line:  Get serious, people!

Discuss among yourselves….

3 Comments

Filed under Education, Health Care, History, My Journey, Politics, Race, Religion, Social Commentary, The Economy, The Environment, The South, Virginia

Tagged as , , , , ,

January 5, 2011 · 9:44 pm

Get Ready for a G.O.P. Rerun – NYTimes.com

Another great article from Bob Herbert:

You just can’t close the door on this crowd. The party that brought us the worst economy since the Great Depression, that led us into Iraq and the worst foreign policy disaster in American history, that would like to take a hammer to Social Security and a chisel to Medicare, is back in control of the House of Representatives with the expressed mission of undermining all things Obama.

Once we had Dick Cheney telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and belligerently asserting that deficits don’t matter. We had Phil Gramm, Enron’s favorite senator and John McCain’s economic guru, blithely assuring us in 2008 that we were suffering from a “mental recession.”

(Mr. Gramm was some piece of work. A champion of deregulation, he was disdainful of ordinary people. “We’re the only nation in the world,” he once said, “where all of our poor people are fat.”)

Maybe the voters missed the entertainment value of the hard-hearted, compulsively destructive G.O.P. headliners. Maybe they viewed them the way audiences saw the larger-than-life villains in old-time melodramas. It must be something like that because it’s awfully hard to miss the actual policies of a gang that almost wrecked the country.

MORE:   Get Ready for a G.O.P. Rerun – NYTimes.com.

Leave a comment

Filed under History, Race, The Economy

December 22, 2010 · 10:19 am

The American Civil War Still Being Fought

The secession of South Carolina on December 20, 1860 began the path to the Civil War.  We are approaching an important anniversary here in the US and people need to be prepared to talk about it.

It seems this was covered much more in the British Press than in the American Press.  That, alone, says something.

It just blows my mind that some white people in the South still insist Slavery was not the cause of the Civil War.  Admittedly, this is a complex, layered issue which is why so many people want to avoid talking about it or thinking about it too deeply…It makes them uncomfortable.

But white people in the South need to finally, once and for all, 150 years after the start of the Civil War, accept the fact that Slavery was the primary cause of the War and not “States Rights”.

We can’t begin to have an honest dialogue about Race in the South until this fundamental fact is accepted by all people.

The first step is to stop all the “Moonlight and Magnolias” foolishness, like the Secession Ball in Charleston and the Confederate History Month glorification in Virginia.

Even Scarlett O’Hara finally put all that stuff  behind her and moved on….

It’s time we did, too.

Good points from Eric Foner in The Guardian (UK).

 

What does it mean to say that slavery caused secession and the war? Not that the South was evil and the North moral. In his second inaugural, Lincoln spoke of “American”, not southern, slavery – his point being the complicity of the entire nation in the sin of slavery. Few northerners demanded immediate abolition. Abolitionists were a small and beleaguered minority. Sectional differences certainly existed over economic policy, political power and other matters. But in the absence of slavery, it is inconceivable that these differences would have led to war.

Rather, it means that by 1860, two distinct societies had emerged within the United States, one resting on slave labour, the other on free. This development led inexorably to divergent conceptions of the role of slavery in the nation’s future. Northern Republicans did not call for direct action against slavery where it already existed – the constitution, in any event, made such action impossible. But Lincoln spoke of putting slavery on the road to “ultimate extinction”, and he and other Republicans saw his election and a halt to the institution’s expansion as a first step in this direction. Secessionists saw it this way as well.

A century and a half after the civil war, many white Americans, especially in the South, seem to take the idea that slavery caused the war as a personal accusation. The point, however, is not to condemn individuals or an entire region of the country, but to face candidly the central role of slavery in our national history. Only in this way can Americans arrive at a deeper, more nuanced understanding of our past.

via The American civil war still being fought | Eric Foner | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk.

1 Comment

Filed under History, Politics, Race, Social Commentary, The South