I never cease to be amazed by the audacity of Europeans when it comes to their social and political intercourse with the Black and Brown people of the world: Africans, African-Americans, Mexicans, Middle-easterners, and the peoples in the near east: India, Pakistan, etc.
The execution of Saddam Hussein takes the whole cake. When was the last time that a Head of State was hung for being cruel? Milosevic, Pik Botha in South Africa? No way. The Europeans in this country not only lied about Hussein as a pretext for invading his country, then they created a law that did not exist before the invasion and accused him of violating it. Then they created a court to try him for violation of this ex post facto law. Then they installed judges who had no respect for his being the Head of State, or even an individual entitled to justice, even dismissing a judge who did just that. Then they hung him only after the puppet court had finished the work that the European-Americans charged it with.
This is not about defending the conduct of Hussein. He was a rat. He slaughtered his own people without just cause, he committed clear acts of genocide against the Kurds. He had some atoning to do. No doubt about it. But he should have been sent to the Hague where genocide trials are conducted under international scrutiny; a place where a fair trial is assured by international treaty. If he was convicted there, he would have been punished according to international law.
Instead, the European-Americans, under the direction of a first-rate, second-rate President had the audacity to make a mockery of any notion of justice and race this Head of State to his doom in the name of democracy. God only knows what they would have done if the court had aquitted Hussein.
If a Brown Head of State cannot receive justice, what chance does ordinary American Black and Brown people anywhere have?
Shame on European-Americans. Shame on America.
Sunday, December 31, 2006
Tuesday, December 5, 2006
De Facto School Segregation
As of yesterday, December 4, 2006, the U.S. Supreme Court has an opportunity to abolish the distinction between de jure segregation (segregation mandated by state law) and de facto segregation (segregation that occurs in the normal course of urban, residential patterns) in public schools. Brown vs. The Board of Education, in 1954 (347 U.S. 483)dealt with the former. It ruled that states do not fulfill their obligation to treat its citizens equally by state mandated segregation of children in public based upon race irrespective of a finding that the schools are otherwise equal in buildings, curricula, qualifications and salaries of teachers and other tangible factors. Separate but equal is inherently unequal, it said. Brown outlawed state imposed segregation. However, since then, when left to their own devices and the natural tendencies of America to short-change Blacks socially and economically, American segregation in schools has become as rampant now as it was in 1954.
Whether segregation is mandated by State law or is permitted to exist on some other basis, such as residence or economic status should be equally condemned. The Brown court recognized the evidence that modern authority has clearly established that "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of seperating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system" Page 495. To paraphrase, segregation by any other name would smell as bad. W.S. Plans to negate de facto segregation should be given great leeway by this Court even if it means that school assignments must be made on the basis of race. Integrated education is a political obligation. The Brown Court found that "Today (1954) education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. ... It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces...It is the very foundation of good citizenship" 347 U.S. 483 at page 493.
How then can states and local governments (including local school boards) fulfill this responsibility if they do not mandate a system of distribution of students based upon race to assure that de facto segregation does not occur, even if it means that such distribution might inconvenience some for the benefit of others.
So why is the Supreme Court struggling with a situation where a school district tries to prevent creeping segregation from occurring by auditing the racial makeup of its student population and meting out slots in a way to assure a racial balance. If the plan is designed to fulfill it's responsibility to Black students by making sure that they have as equal an opportunity to attend high performing schools as white students, what is wrong with that? I'll tell you what; First, because white parents are upset because their children must go to a more distant lower, performing school (usually in a minority neighborhood) so a Black child would have an opportunity to go to a high performing school (the one in the complaining parents' neighborhood) and Second because the pivotal Supreme Court Justices are conservative, Republican appointees, including Justice Clarence Thomas, a "Black" man.
Everyone knows that Republican conservatism has historically shunned concern for Blacks' full participation in this country. Most of the old Dixicrats, Senators from confederate states, traditionally Democrats, changed parties to the Republican Party or voted for Republican candidates when the Civil Rights Movement came along, because the Republican Party's attitude towards equality of the races more closely fit the southern, racial "traditions". (Can you say Strom Thurmond?)
Double standard? You bet. Will this Supreme Court require that white parent's child to attend a majority Black populated school some distance away so that some Black child, who would otherwise get a poorer education at his neighborhood school could come into that white parent's neighborhood school where school performance is high and have an equal chance at success? No way. But that's vintage America. The white parent calls it racism. Duh?
It's about spin. American will never be race neutral.
Whether segregation is mandated by State law or is permitted to exist on some other basis, such as residence or economic status should be equally condemned. The Brown court recognized the evidence that modern authority has clearly established that "Segregation of white and colored children in public schools has a detrimental effect upon the colored children. The impact is greater when it has the sanction of the law, for the policy of seperating the races is usually interpreted as denoting the inferiority of the negro group. A sense of inferiority affects the motivation of a child to learn. Segregation with the sanction of law, therefore, has a tendency to [retard] the educational and mental development of negro children and to deprive them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racially integrated school system" Page 495. To paraphrase, segregation by any other name would smell as bad. W.S. Plans to negate de facto segregation should be given great leeway by this Court even if it means that school assignments must be made on the basis of race. Integrated education is a political obligation. The Brown Court found that "Today (1954) education is perhaps the most important function of state and local governments. ... It is required in the performance of our most basic public responsibilities, even service in the armed forces...It is the very foundation of good citizenship" 347 U.S. 483 at page 493.
How then can states and local governments (including local school boards) fulfill this responsibility if they do not mandate a system of distribution of students based upon race to assure that de facto segregation does not occur, even if it means that such distribution might inconvenience some for the benefit of others.
So why is the Supreme Court struggling with a situation where a school district tries to prevent creeping segregation from occurring by auditing the racial makeup of its student population and meting out slots in a way to assure a racial balance. If the plan is designed to fulfill it's responsibility to Black students by making sure that they have as equal an opportunity to attend high performing schools as white students, what is wrong with that? I'll tell you what; First, because white parents are upset because their children must go to a more distant lower, performing school (usually in a minority neighborhood) so a Black child would have an opportunity to go to a high performing school (the one in the complaining parents' neighborhood) and Second because the pivotal Supreme Court Justices are conservative, Republican appointees, including Justice Clarence Thomas, a "Black" man.
Everyone knows that Republican conservatism has historically shunned concern for Blacks' full participation in this country. Most of the old Dixicrats, Senators from confederate states, traditionally Democrats, changed parties to the Republican Party or voted for Republican candidates when the Civil Rights Movement came along, because the Republican Party's attitude towards equality of the races more closely fit the southern, racial "traditions". (Can you say Strom Thurmond?)
Double standard? You bet. Will this Supreme Court require that white parent's child to attend a majority Black populated school some distance away so that some Black child, who would otherwise get a poorer education at his neighborhood school could come into that white parent's neighborhood school where school performance is high and have an equal chance at success? No way. But that's vintage America. The white parent calls it racism. Duh?
It's about spin. American will never be race neutral.
Friday, December 1, 2006
Bush and Courage
I can respect a man who makes a mistake and owns up to it. We have all made mistakes. Shit happens and spoils the best laid plans of many. But it is a sniveling coward who perpetuates mistakes that cost men's lives and countless billions of dollars that could be used to better the lives of living Americans by continuing on a path that is doomed to failure and was the wrong path to take to begin with.
Every indicator shows that we should not have gotten into the Iraq war from jump street. The reasons deliberately advanced for that action were bogus. The strategy for concluding that action was non existent. The government now in place was hand-picked by us and lacks the will, integrity or ability to control spiraling civil war that has resulted from the vacuum created by the capture by us and trial of Saddam Hussein for actions that did not violate Iraqi law when they were committed. Can you say ex post facto? American lives are still being squandered in a plan hastily conceived in the panic of 9/11. The whole thing is a mess.
Now despite being told by his most senior advisers and every committee ever created on the Iraq situation that we should get our hat and split, (for the uninitiated that means leave, vamoose, amscray) Bush throws the onus of withdrawal on the current puppet regime with the simple phrase : We will stay in Iraq until the "job" is done and until the people of Iraq no longer want us to remain". That is a shameless display of lack of courage. He has a tiger by the tail and lacks the will and courage to let go and withdraw.
Our presence, in the first place is really a result of Eurogenia; see my earlier Blog about whites' irresistible urge to control the lives of Black and Brown people. Bush should take a cue from Lindon Johnson. LBJ inherited a quagmire in Vietnam, by the way a war that was also started on a bogus premise (a fabricated story of an attack on an American ship in the Tonkin Gulf). It was obvious to him that there was no graceful way out, and he had the courage to admit that he did not have a solution and withdrew from public office rather than be responsible for wasting any more American lives. That took courage.
Bush should have the courage to admit that the Iraq civil war will only get worse if we stay and that he was wrong and order withdrawal. It is no longer our fight, if it ever was.
Every indicator shows that we should not have gotten into the Iraq war from jump street. The reasons deliberately advanced for that action were bogus. The strategy for concluding that action was non existent. The government now in place was hand-picked by us and lacks the will, integrity or ability to control spiraling civil war that has resulted from the vacuum created by the capture by us and trial of Saddam Hussein for actions that did not violate Iraqi law when they were committed. Can you say ex post facto? American lives are still being squandered in a plan hastily conceived in the panic of 9/11. The whole thing is a mess.
Now despite being told by his most senior advisers and every committee ever created on the Iraq situation that we should get our hat and split, (for the uninitiated that means leave, vamoose, amscray) Bush throws the onus of withdrawal on the current puppet regime with the simple phrase : We will stay in Iraq until the "job" is done and until the people of Iraq no longer want us to remain". That is a shameless display of lack of courage. He has a tiger by the tail and lacks the will and courage to let go and withdraw.
Our presence, in the first place is really a result of Eurogenia; see my earlier Blog about whites' irresistible urge to control the lives of Black and Brown people. Bush should take a cue from Lindon Johnson. LBJ inherited a quagmire in Vietnam, by the way a war that was also started on a bogus premise (a fabricated story of an attack on an American ship in the Tonkin Gulf). It was obvious to him that there was no graceful way out, and he had the courage to admit that he did not have a solution and withdrew from public office rather than be responsible for wasting any more American lives. That took courage.
Bush should have the courage to admit that the Iraq civil war will only get worse if we stay and that he was wrong and order withdrawal. It is no longer our fight, if it ever was.
Tuesday, November 28, 2006
Niggas
I am pleased to see so much dialogue occurring in national media about one aspect or another of the Black predicament. However, much of that dialogue is misdirected and marginal and a waste of the few moments that Black opinion is allowed to be showcased on national media. The hubub about Michael Richards' use of the word nigger, or as Blacks say, nigga, is just such a waste. It ranks up there with the Cosby diatribe about Black conduct within its community.
How high Blacks wear their pants, and how many books they carry home from school in their book bags, and how many children they father and fail to support and whether they do or do not use the N-wordhas no material bearing on the Black condition in America. That behavior, and the use of the word nigga is not the reason for the racial disparity that has Blacks in 2006 earning one-half what whites earn for the same work; that has average Blacks unemployed at twice, and in the under 25 year old males class five times the rate of their white counterpart; that has Blacks who are out of work taking 3 times as long to find another job; that has the average Black high school graduate reading at the 5th grade level and has Blacks being gunned down in the streets during an Execution in Blue. These are the important issues that Black leaders need to seriously address not whether nigga is a legitimate word; or is endearing or perjorative; or appropriate for use in a mixed audience. Or whether Blacks should let their underwear show.
Black leaders, Jesse Jackson principally among them have snow poles for backbones and seize on these marginal issues to appear to be concerned and doing something to improve the lot of Black people in this country and elsewhere. Snow poles? That's one of Jesse's favorite metaphors. He suggested, long ago, that Blacks have snow poles for backbones. When things are cool, those backbones have Blacks standing erect, proud and determined. But that when confronted with racist America and the heat is turned up, those backbones melt and whither and their owners stand stoop shouldered and submissive. I love that thought. As it turns out, however, and to the everlasting detriment of American Blacks, he and the current crop of Black leaders all suffer from that affliction.
None of the Black leaders are confronting the American institutions that account for the economic disparities attendant Blacks in America. This is a capitalist country. Money is everything. Either you got it or you don't. If you don't, you are powerless. It is even more fine tuned than that. If you simply have less than the next group, your group is less influential than that other group on a political and social level.
While Blacks do not have the wealth of whites in this country, they have enormous consuming power; enough to tip the economic health of any one company, in any one industry over and down near the bottom of his counterparts' listing should that consuming power be microdirected away from such companies on a scheduled and selectively targeted basis. What Blacks need is some serious warfare against these corporate institutions that perpetuate American racial, and more importantly economic disparity. If the numbers were leveled off, and Blacks earned the same as whites in this country, i.e., twice what they now earn, the Black Ghetto as we now know it would disappear and with it, Ghetto attitudes that the Cosbys and Waters of America seek to denigrate.
The Cosbys, Waters, Sharptons and Jacksons are overly concerned with the quality of life in the hole, when they should direct all of their attention to getting Blacks out of the American Black Hole.
Bottom line: Black leaders should spend those precious media minutes going after those institutions that cause the important problems in the "Quarter". They are shooting at the wrong targets and wasting precious resources in the process.
How high Blacks wear their pants, and how many books they carry home from school in their book bags, and how many children they father and fail to support and whether they do or do not use the N-wordhas no material bearing on the Black condition in America. That behavior, and the use of the word nigga is not the reason for the racial disparity that has Blacks in 2006 earning one-half what whites earn for the same work; that has average Blacks unemployed at twice, and in the under 25 year old males class five times the rate of their white counterpart; that has Blacks who are out of work taking 3 times as long to find another job; that has the average Black high school graduate reading at the 5th grade level and has Blacks being gunned down in the streets during an Execution in Blue. These are the important issues that Black leaders need to seriously address not whether nigga is a legitimate word; or is endearing or perjorative; or appropriate for use in a mixed audience. Or whether Blacks should let their underwear show.
Black leaders, Jesse Jackson principally among them have snow poles for backbones and seize on these marginal issues to appear to be concerned and doing something to improve the lot of Black people in this country and elsewhere. Snow poles? That's one of Jesse's favorite metaphors. He suggested, long ago, that Blacks have snow poles for backbones. When things are cool, those backbones have Blacks standing erect, proud and determined. But that when confronted with racist America and the heat is turned up, those backbones melt and whither and their owners stand stoop shouldered and submissive. I love that thought. As it turns out, however, and to the everlasting detriment of American Blacks, he and the current crop of Black leaders all suffer from that affliction.
None of the Black leaders are confronting the American institutions that account for the economic disparities attendant Blacks in America. This is a capitalist country. Money is everything. Either you got it or you don't. If you don't, you are powerless. It is even more fine tuned than that. If you simply have less than the next group, your group is less influential than that other group on a political and social level.
While Blacks do not have the wealth of whites in this country, they have enormous consuming power; enough to tip the economic health of any one company, in any one industry over and down near the bottom of his counterparts' listing should that consuming power be microdirected away from such companies on a scheduled and selectively targeted basis. What Blacks need is some serious warfare against these corporate institutions that perpetuate American racial, and more importantly economic disparity. If the numbers were leveled off, and Blacks earned the same as whites in this country, i.e., twice what they now earn, the Black Ghetto as we now know it would disappear and with it, Ghetto attitudes that the Cosbys and Waters of America seek to denigrate.
The Cosbys, Waters, Sharptons and Jacksons are overly concerned with the quality of life in the hole, when they should direct all of their attention to getting Blacks out of the American Black Hole.
Bottom line: Black leaders should spend those precious media minutes going after those institutions that cause the important problems in the "Quarter". They are shooting at the wrong targets and wasting precious resources in the process.
Monday, November 27, 2006
Execution in Blue
Execution in Blue:
It did not take a genius to have a clear understanding of the news account that an unarmed man and his companions were gunned down by a NY Police department squad late at night when no one was looking to know that the identity of the victims were Black. Police departments do not fire 40+ shots at an unarmed human being during the course of their duties unless the man is Black, with an occasional Brown man. Never a white man. When they are confronted with a white man in a similar situation, they spend hours in negotiating his surrender. They clear out the neighborhood so innocent people don't get hit by stray bullets from the no-shooting cops. They bring in FBI negotiators to preserve the life of their brethren. But when the target is Black it's a happy firing range where cops empty their magazines and have time to reload so as not to miss the fun.
The real problem I have with this scenario is not that it is still happening, but that the leadership in the Black and Brown communities is so spineless. In fact, it because of the latter that it IS still happening.
It did not take a genius to have a clear understanding of the news account that an unarmed man and his companions were gunned down by a NY Police department squad late at night when no one was looking to know that the identity of the victims were Black. Police departments do not fire 40+ shots at an unarmed human being during the course of their duties unless the man is Black, with an occasional Brown man. Never a white man. When they are confronted with a white man in a similar situation, they spend hours in negotiating his surrender. They clear out the neighborhood so innocent people don't get hit by stray bullets from the no-shooting cops. They bring in FBI negotiators to preserve the life of their brethren. But when the target is Black it's a happy firing range where cops empty their magazines and have time to reload so as not to miss the fun.
The real problem I have with this scenario is not that it is still happening, but that the leadership in the Black and Brown communities is so spineless. In fact, it because of the latter that it IS still happening.
Eurogenia
Europeans just don't get it.
They intrude into other people's homes and cannot understand why the homeowners don't put up with it or appreciate why it is for their own good. The Europeans began this garbage during the Crusades. They repeated their mistake during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they decided to divide up the entire continent of Africa and most of the Middle East among themselves. Can you say Raj? They did not ask the natives. They just showed up one day and said "you do not live here anymore" like the nazis did to the homes of the jews during Kristal Nacht in the 30's and 40's. And they do it for the most self-serving and specious of reasons. Can you say Manifest Destiny?
They might have gotten away with this garbage when the natives only had spears, or in the case of the American West, arrows. But not recently. Can you say RPG? Or IED? Or the Mau-Mau? Or Vietcong? Or 9/11?
I think it is a genetic condition I like to describe as Eurogenia; a disease process characterized principally by an irresistable, European compulsion to dominate the Brown and Black people of the world.
Until this afflicted populace realizes that it has to deal with Browns and Blacks as global partners rather than as the vanquished, American and other European lives will be wasted on Brown and Black battlefields to support a curable disease process.
Dumb!!!
hs
They intrude into other people's homes and cannot understand why the homeowners don't put up with it or appreciate why it is for their own good. The Europeans began this garbage during the Crusades. They repeated their mistake during the late 19th and early 20th centuries when they decided to divide up the entire continent of Africa and most of the Middle East among themselves. Can you say Raj? They did not ask the natives. They just showed up one day and said "you do not live here anymore" like the nazis did to the homes of the jews during Kristal Nacht in the 30's and 40's. And they do it for the most self-serving and specious of reasons. Can you say Manifest Destiny?
They might have gotten away with this garbage when the natives only had spears, or in the case of the American West, arrows. But not recently. Can you say RPG? Or IED? Or the Mau-Mau? Or Vietcong? Or 9/11?
I think it is a genetic condition I like to describe as Eurogenia; a disease process characterized principally by an irresistable, European compulsion to dominate the Brown and Black people of the world.
Until this afflicted populace realizes that it has to deal with Browns and Blacks as global partners rather than as the vanquished, American and other European lives will be wasted on Brown and Black battlefields to support a curable disease process.
Dumb!!!
hs
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