Tag Archives: Racism

May 28, 2011 · 1:09 pm

Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life

New post up on my other blog….

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

I’ve said it before, growing up in Danville, Virginia in the late 1960′s to early 1970′s was like growing up in South Africa under Apartheid.

Brown vs the Board of Education took many years to be fully implemented in the South and, as usual, I think Danville, Virginia  was one of the last cities to be desegregated.

But desegregation did finally happened in Danville- when I was in the 5th grade.

I still remember that day….Our white school was pretty much transferred en mass to a Black Middle School.  That’s how they did things then…

It was a very big day.  All our Mothers- who usually couldn’t be bothered by their children-  either took the day off from work or cut their Valium doses enough so they could take us to school.

Until this point, we had simply walked to school and they had done whatever it was they did…This level of interaction was unheard of- and frankly, unwelcome.  We were used to being left alone to work things out on our own and they were used to being, well, left alone.  But the times, they were a changing and this was the least we could all do…

via Chapter 55: Integration- Part 1: Or When Sunny Gets Blue | My Southern Gothic Life.

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April 28, 2011 · 8:34 pm

For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation

Fascinating article about President Obama and Racism in “The Nation”.

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

Remember when the media regularly asked if Barack Obama was “black enough” to get the support of African-Americans? In 2007 pundits wondered if a black-identified but technically biracial candidate who came of age in the post–civil rights era, was raised far from traditional African-American communities, was educated in the Ivy League and boasted a foreign name might be more palatable to white voters than black ones. Today this query seems hopelessly naïve and endearingly optimistic about the fluidity of American racial identities. After the secret-Muslim accusations, the witch doctor posters, the “You lie!” shout-down and the chimpanzee e-mails—it is clear that President Obama is certainly “black enough” to experience both racially motivated public attacks and exceptional support among racial minorities.

But the tenacity of the birther movement has revived the issue of Obama’s blackness for me. Nearly a quarter of Americans, most of them white, believe President Obama was not born in the United States. The resilience of the birther myth—lately given air by Donald Trump—has even forced the White House to post a copy of Obama’s birth certificate online in hopes of settling the matter once and for all. Good luck—this controversy isn’t about documentation; it’s about deeply held beliefs, even faith claims, about who is and is not a legitimate citizen.

Many on the left say that birtherism is just racism, but there’s more than simple racial animus behind it. I suspect that part of the problem is that Obama is indeed not black enough; specifically, the president is not sufficiently Negro—the historical variation of blackness that is uniquely and indisputably American.

via For Birthers, Obama’s Not Black Enough | The Nation.

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April 6, 2011 · 8:35 pm

Happy Birthday, Billie Holiday!

The Great Billie Holiday was born on April 7, 1915 and left us entirely too soon…

But her recordings live on…

As does her legion…

For those of you who only remember Diana Ross in “The Lady Sings the Blues”, here is the real Lady Day:

“Strange Fruit”

“God Bless the Child”-She co-wrote this one…

“Good Morning Heartache”

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March 24, 2011 · 8:35 pm

Race and the 2012 election – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post

Glad to see the re-elect numbers so high…

And the race issue with White People doesn’t surprise me.  The whole Tea Party thing is really just a cover for racism.

There are a lot of White People who just can’t deal with the fact that we have a Black/African American President.  And they have a lot of trouble admitting it-even to themselves.

The good news is that we are well on our way to being a multi-racial society and in less than 50 years, White People will be a minority.  Hispanics are the fastest growing demographic group.  That’s something else that scares them…

Demographics and trends continue to support a growing Democratic Party and a dying Republican Party in the long run…

If we can just survive the short run without the GOP destroying everything…

Dave Weigel notes that Barack Obama’s poll numbers are higher than George W. Bush’s or Bill Clinton’s were at this point in the political cycle. You can come up with a lot of reasons for that, but the big one seems to be “ninety-two percent of black voters want to re-elect Obama, as do 66 percent of Hispanics. Only one percent of blacks (!) and 16 percent of Hispanics want to vote against Obama. That’s the source of the positive re-elect number — break it down to white voters, and only 36 percent of them want to re-elect him.”

In “Obama’s Race,” Michael Tesler and David Sears mount a strong case: Far from ushering in a “post-racial period” in American politics, Obama’s election “was more polarized by racial attitudes than any other presidential election on record and, perhaps more significantly, that there were two sides to this racialization: resentful opposition to to and racially liberal support for Obama.”

Another way to say this is that far from marking the end of us-vs.-them elections associated with Richard Nixon’s infamous Southern strategy, the 2008 election was arguably the beginning of its inverse: an electoral campaign where race, because of the skin color of the Democratic nominee, was a central issue, but this time, the “racially progressive” coalition proved larger than the racially conservative coalition. Call it the Northern strategy.

What’s interesting, though, is that the racial polarization has continued into Obama’s presidency.

via Race and the 2012 election – Ezra Klein – The Washington Post.

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