Tag Archives: Racism

February 2, 2012 · 8:59 am

Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism

I am not at all surprised….

In fact, this just reinforces what I already thought and observed through life experiences….

And the elected Republicans and GOP base certainly down play and belittle science and education….

They are playing to their audience and reinforcing their fears and prejudices to get elected….

So they can take care of their rich friends and Corporations….

The only other reason people are “conservative” is the when the Rich are trying to preserve their wealth!

From the Huffington Post:

The study, published in Psychological Science, showed that people who score low on I.Q. tests in childhood are more likely to develop prejudiced beliefs and socially conservative politics in adulthood.

I.Q., or intelligence quotient, is a score determined by standardized tests, but whether the tests truly reveal intelligence remains a topic of hot debate among psychologists.

Dr. Gordon Hodson, a professor of psychology at the university and the study’s lead author, said the finding represented evidence of a vicious cycle: People of low intelligence gravitate toward socially conservative ideologies, which stress resistance to change and, in turn, prejudice, he told LiveScience.

Why might less intelligent people be drawn to conservative ideologies? Because such ideologies feature “structure and order” that make it easier to comprehend a complicated world, Dodson said. “Unfortunately, many of these features can also contribute to prejudice,” he added.

Dr. Brian Nosek, a University of Virginia psychologist, echoed those sentiments.

“Reality is complicated and messy,” he told The Huffington Post in an email. “Ideologies get rid of the messiness and impose a simpler solution. So, it may not be surprising that people with less cognitive capacity will be attracted to simplifying ideologies.”

via Intelligence Study Links Low I.Q. To Prejudice, Racism, Conservatism.

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November 30, 2011 · 8:12 pm

Interracial Couple Banned From Kentucky Church

And what century is this???

As Gandhi said:  “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ”

From HuffingtonPost.com:

 

In a move to “promote greater unity” among its body and the Pike County community it serves, a small Kentucky church voted to ban interracial couples from membership and from participating in certain worship activities, Kentucky.com reports.

Though reminiscent of some Jim Crow-era mandate, the Gulnare Freewill Baptist Church actually made the decision earlier this month, following a visit from 24-year-old Stella Harville, daughter of the church’s secretary and clerk, and her 29-year-old fiance, Ticha Chikuni, a native of Zimbabwe.

According to Harville’s father, Dean Harville, Stella brought Chikuni to the church in June where they performed a song for the congregation.

Following the visit, pastor Melvin Thompson told Harville that his daughter and her fiance could not sing at the church again. Thompson later proposed that the church go on record saying that while all people were welcome to attend public worship services there, the church did not condone interracial marriage.

His proposal, which was accepted by a 9-6 vote last week, also suggested that married interracial couples be prohibited from becoming members and used in worship activities, except for funerals.

“It’s not the spirit of the community in any way, shape or form,” said Randy Johnson, president of the Pike County Ministerial Association, according to Kentucky.com.

While Pike County and the surrounding community come to grips with the church’s decision, researchers at Ohio State University and Cornell University say black-white marriages in the United States are soaring, increasing threefold, from 3 percent in 1980 to 10.7 percent in 2008.

via Interracial Couple Banned From Kentucky Church.

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November 21, 2011 · 7:16 pm

Rush Limbaugh: Michelle Obama Guilty Of ‘Uppity-ism’

You can tell it’s the beginning of the Holiday Season….

All the GOP idiots are trying to get all their meanness and pettiness out now so they can either go on vacation or get busy with their next agenda items:  stealing Christmas, Hanukkah and Kwanzaa like the pathetic little grinch men they are….

Since they are a thankless crew, they are skipping Thanksgiving….

I, mean, Newt wants to put children back in sweatshops and now Rush Limbaugh is going back to the sixties to channel his new role model George Wallace….

Personally, I think both Newt and Rush are uppity and ought to be forced to work in sweatshops for less than the minimum wage they loath.  Maybe they will in their next lives- they surely will have a lot to atone for….

What a nasty little group…..and I mean not only these jerks,  but also the ones who follow them.

I wonder if they thought Laura Bush or Pat Nixon were uppity?

From the Huffington Post:

Rush Limbaugh accused Michelle Obama of “uppity-ism” during his Monday show.

Limbaugh was speaking about the First Lady’s recent reception at a NASCAR event, where both she and Jill Biden were booed by the crowd. He said it was not surprising that she was booed, because the crowd at NASCAR resented her healthy eating initiatives and her husband’s policies.

“What the hell is there to cheer for?” Limbaugh asked. He said that people also didn’t like “paying millions of dollars” for Obama’s vacations. “They understand it’s a little bit of a waste,” he said. “They understand it’s a little bit of uppity-ism.”

via Rush Limbaugh: Michelle Obama Guilty Of ‘Uppity-ism’ (AUDIO).

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October 3, 2011 · 10:30 pm

New Evidence Could Clear 14-year-old Executed by South Carolina

This is one of the saddest cases I’ve ever read about….and that’s saying a lot.

This case, alone, should make people realize how unjust the Death Penalty is and how we will never be able to separate it from racism.

And another word to my Republican “Friends”, you can’t be “pro-life” and “pro-death penalty”.  It’s a contradiction in terms….

From RawStory.com:

Over 67 years after 14-year-old George Junius Stinney Jr. was put to death by the state of South Carolina, he may soon be cleared of the crime that people familiar with the case say he never could have committed.

A lawyer and an activist both told Raw Story recently that new evidence will show that the black boy could not have possibly murdered two white girls, 11-year-old Betty June Binnicker and seven-year-old Mary Emma Thames.

Stinney, the youngest person to receive the death penalty in the last 100 years, was executed on June 16, 1944. At five feet one inch and only 95 pounds, the straps of the electric chair did not fit the boy. His feet could not touch the floor. As he was hit with the first 2,400-volt surge of electricity, the mask covering his face slipped off, “revealing his wide-open, tearful eyes and saliva coming from his mouth,” according to author Joy James.

After two more jolts of electricity, the boy was dead.

MORE:   New evidence could clear 14-year-old executed by South Carolina | The Raw Story.

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September 26, 2011 · 7:45 pm

Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach

Interesting article from Anthea Butler at Religion Dispatches.

For the record, she is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Pennsylvania and an African-American woman.

While I continue to support President Obama, I have my concerns as well.

He’s been much friendlier to Wall Street than Main Street…

He doesn’t seem to “dance with the ones who brought him” too well.  Sometimes, it’s almost like he’s ashamed to be seen with us.  He had to be pushed and pushed to take action on Gay issues, but he did take action.

Now he’s pushing some buttons with another core constituency.

I hope he’s had a true realization- on the Road to Damascus, so to speak- and this isn’t just fear driven based on recent polls.

If he had pushed the agenda he was elected to pursue, instead of tilting at the windmills of compromise with the GOP, we wouldn’t be having this dialogue…

Here is an excerpt from Dr Butler’s column and a link to the full version:

Obama’s performance of black preaching may play well to church folks who love him no matter what, but to those critical of his policies that have placed African Americans at the highest unemployment rates, the president’s fake whooping rings hollow. Why is it that every time the president speaks to a predominately black audience, he goes into a preacher’s cadence, and starts to speak as though he were at a pulpit? Why is it that he never gets “righteously angry” with the white folks as often as he does at the black folks?

If you think I am harsh, consider a segment of the president’s 2010 CBC speech: “I need everybody here to go back to your neighborhoods to go back to your workplaces, to go to churches and go to the barbershops and go to the beauty shops, and tell them we’ve got more work to do.”

Damn. I think most black people I know do more than just work, go to church, and get their hair done.

Let me say it more bluntly. The president said at the end of his CBC speech: “[I] expect all of you to march with me and press on. Take off your bedroom slippers, put on your marching shoes. Shake it off. Stop complaining, stop grumbling, stop crying. We are going to press on.”

That was the moment that the president turned into a jackleg preacher. A jackleg preacher is an untrained preacher who relies on tried and true tropes to get his audience to respond to preaching. If a jackleg is really good, he or she can get the money or whatever else they want by hitting the sweet spot, that emotional place where the congregation always responds well, because they recognize the feelings and emotions the jackleg preacher wants to evoke. Referring to taking off the slippers and putting on marching shoes is a tired racist trope, and besides, isn’t Snooki the person who wears her slippers in public? I don’t think she’s African American.

There is a history with Obama’s speeches to predominantly black audiences that either try to use respectability or shame to change steroetypical behavior. Obama’s 2008 speech excoriating absent black fathers at the Apostolic Church of God in Chicago, and his comments on the campaign trail in 2008 in Beaumont, Texas urging black parents “not to feed their kids cold Popeye’s chicken for breakfast,” are just two examples of how Obama deploys this racially-coded rhetorical strategy. The president’s behavior since taking office towards the African American community has been either to tell black folks to get in line and get to work, or gee, I love ya’ll, but I need your vote. If only he would speak to Republicans and Tea Partiers in the same harsh manner.

MORE:   Obama’s Preaching Doesn’t Reach | Religion Dispatches.

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September 23, 2011 · 8:32 pm

Why Does the South Execute More People?

Fascinating story from the Institute for Southern Studies about racism, the death penalty and it’s roots in Slavery….

 

The regional disparity is striking. Since the Supreme Court lifted a ban on death sentences in 1976, 1,264 people have been executed in the U.S. And 921 of those executions — or 73 percent of the total — took place in 13 Southern states.

Its true that Texas — and what some call its death machine — skew the numbers: Its 474 executions account for nearly 38 percent of the U.S. total. But the fact remains: Of the many things you can call the death penalty, one fitting adjective is that its largely Southern.

What has made the South the home base of capital punishment? As you might suspect, executions have their roots in the history of slavery. As noted in A Short History of the American Death Penalty [pdf]:

“In contrast to capital punishment in the northern states, capital punishment in the South was not limited primarily to common law felonies. Rather, the death penalty was a powerful tool for keeping the slave population in submission. Crimes that interfered with the ownership of slaves were punished by death. In 1837, North Carolina, which lacked a penitentiary, had about 26 capital crimes including slave-stealing, concealing a slave with intent to free him, second conviction of inciting slaves to insurrection, and second conviction of circulating seditious literature among slaves.”

This racially-influenced law-and-order mentality spilled over into other crimes: In North Carolina, stealing bank notes, “crimes against nature” “buggery, sodomy, bestiality” and a second offense of forgery and statutory rape came to be considered capital offenses.

Racial disparity was literally written into the law with the Southern death penalty. After the Civil War, Black Codes created more crimes punishable by death for African-Americans than whites. In the 1830s, Virginia had five capital crimes for whites but an estimated 70 such crimes for black slaves.

Today, the well-documented racial disparity in death sentences has become one of the central arguments among opponents for ending capital punishment.

But less discussed is the racial divide in how people view the death penalty. For example, underneath the polls showing widespread support is one of the most well-documented facts in death penalty research: that it enjoys much higher support among whites than other racial groups, especially African-Americans.

For example, a 2005 Gallup poll was typical in finding that, while there was little difference in death penalty support among different age groups, and only a moderate 12-point gap between men and women, there was a 27-point difference between white 71% and black 44% support.

MORE:   ISS – Why does the South execute more people?.

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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.

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August 13, 2011 · 6:00 pm

My Fellow American

I received an e-mail from Elizabeth, at the organization “My Fellow American”  asking me to run the video, below.  It is my pleasure to do so….

This organization is focused on inclusion.  It’s mission is to remind people that Muslims are also our fellow Americans, integral parts of our communities and deserving of our respect.

Here is a great video they produced as well as some more information, including a link to their website, below:

About My Fellow American

My Fellow American is an online film and social media project that calls upon concerned Americans to pledge and spread a message that Muslims are our fellow Americans. It asks people of other backgrounds to pledge, and share a real life story about a Muslim friend, neighbor, or colleague that they admire. Using the power of social media, My Fellow American seeks to change the narrative – from Muslims as the other, to Muslims as our fellow Americans.

Most Americans have never met an American Muslim. Many only know Muslims through the way they are portrayed in the media. American Muslims are so often vilified as “the other” that it is possible not to recognize that most were born in the U.S. Or that those who immigrated here came seeking the same freedoms and opportunities that have always attracted people to America.

Muslims are our fellow Americans, who today face threats to their civil rights and even their personal safety because of the fearful and often hateful rhetoric that would not be tolerated were it uttered about any other minority group.

via My Fellow American – About.

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August 9, 2011 · 9:28 pm

GOP’s Nasty ‘Tar Baby’ Politics – Leonard Pitts Jr.

Great article from Leonard Pitts in the Miami Herald.  As usual, I agree with him down the line on this…

 

Ladies and gentlemen, here he is, “your boy,” that “tar baby,” the president of the United Sates, Barack Obama:

Ahem.

The first title was bestowed upon Obama by political commentator Patrick Buchanan on Tuesday, the second by U.S. Rep. Doug Lamborn on the Friday before last, the third by the American electorate in November of 2008. If the first two seem to cancel out the third, well, that’s the point. One hopes they will help the president understand something he has thus far refused to grasp about his political opposition.

Namely, these people don’t want to be friends. They don’t want to compromise for the greater good. They don’t want to solve problems unless by problems you mean his continued tenancy in that mansion on Pennsylvania Ave.

They have not been coy about this. Rush Limbaugh said it (“I hope he fails”) when Mrs. Obama was still picking out a dress for the inauguration. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said in November that, in a time of war and recession, his number one goal is to deny Obama a second term.

Yet somehow, the Obama brain trust, a term herein used advisedly, always seems caught off guard by the ferocity, velocity and fury of the response to him. They were surprised at the verbal and physical violence of the healthcare debate, surprised at the hardiness of the birther nonsense, surprised by the stiff defense of the Bush-era tax cuts.

Now, they are surprised the GOP would rather see the U.S. economy go off a cliff than surrender the aforementioned tax cuts for rich folks. So the debt ceiling gets raised in exchange for cuts to services for the poor, who shortsightedly failed to hire lobbyists.

It is time Obama quit being surprised by the predictable, time he understood this is not politics as usual, not Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill snarling at one another by day and having drinks by night, like that old cartoon where the sheepdog and the coyote punch a time clock to signal the beginning and end of their hostilities. It is not Bill Clinton living in a state of permanent investigation, nor even George W. Bush being called incompetent all day every day.

No, this is a new thing, repulsion at a visceral, indeed, mitochondrial, level. Obama’s denigrators are appalled by the newness of him, the liberality of him, the exoticness of him and, yes, and the blackness of him.

“Your boy?” Really?

Sure. Why not. Didn’t Rep. Lynn Westmoreland call him “uppity?” Didn’t the ex-mayor of Los Alamitos, Calif., send out an email showing the White House with a watermelon patch?

See, here’s the thing: If, as is frequently said, Obama represents America’s future, what do they represent?

You know the answer. Worse, they do, too.

Still, what matters here are neither their feelings nor his. No, what matters is homeowners dispossessed of their homes, workers who can’t find work, sick people who can’t afford health, American soldiers on patrol in hostile places.

The president is a basketball fan, so surely he knows it is sometimes necessary to throw an elbow on your way to the goal. This is one of those times. His instinct to compromise, to work with the opposition to solve problems, is admirable.

But Obama needs to understand: As far as they are concerned, they have no problem bigger than him.

via GOP’s nasty ‘tar baby’ politics – Leonard Pitts Jr. – MiamiHerald.com.

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June 24, 2011 · 8:51 pm

Chapter 56: Integration-Part 2: Negroes, Lesbians and Yankees, Oh My! | My Southern Gothic Life

New Post up on my other Blog…

Here is a brief excerpt and a link to the full post:

Once integration happened, it was really no big deal to most of us.  Some of our parents, however, never recovered.

The South in those days, at least in small towns like ours, was built a lot of unbendable, undefinable, unpublished, unspoken but completely understood rules.  The two biggest one were as follows:

Thou shalt only consort with people just like you.

Never offend the neighbors.

My parents swore by those rules.  My father’s main concern was not pissing off anybody for business reasons.  He really didn’t give a damn about anything else.

My Mother lived for The Rules and to judge others by them.  In her mind, if she had not known someone and their entire family for her entire life- and preferably their family background for several preceding generations-they really weren’t worth knowing.

She also assumed everyone else played by the same rules.  Therefore, she assumed all Black people knew each other and later, all Gay people knew each other.  I’ll never forget the time she said to me:  ”I hope you are running around in public with that Harvey Fierstein person.  I saw him on television and he’s just awful.  I really don’t want to have to try to explain that to my friends.”  It took me a while to figure that out, but then I realized she assumed, just because we were both Gay, we had to know each other and be fast friends.  I wish…I have been in the same New York bar as Harvey, but that was many years later and does not prove her point…

Anyway…

MORE:  Chapter 56: Integration-Part 2: Negroes, Lesbians and Yankees, Oh My! | My Southern Gothic Life.

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