“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Still Rising Again After All These Years 0
Daniel Ruth marvels at the antics of a Florida Republican who is determined to block a memorial to persons held in chattel bondage. A snippet:
Instead Baxley, R-“I Love the Smell of Juleps in the Morning,” said he would prefer a memorial that celebrates people in a more uplifting manner. And since he chairs the Government Oversight and Accountability Committee, where the slavery memorial bill landed, the measure wasn’t even scheduled for a hearing.
. . . because if you don’t talk about it, it didn’t happen, right?
Brain Drain 0
Words fail me.
Robin Attas, an assistant professor of music at the school near Burlington, says her husband, Nicolás Narváez Soza, who is from Nicaragua, and their children have endured a number of incidents that made her family feel threatened and unwelcome.
More at the link.
The Missing Piece (Updated) 0
The reason Republicans are so determined to repeal the ACA, which they chose to dub “Obamacare,” is quite simple.
They cannot stand that the Black Guy did it.
Via Job’s Anger.
Addendum, Later That Same Day:
Josh Marshall comments on ACA repeal passing the House (emphasis added):
That’s the Iron Law: the ‘GOP moderates’ will always cave.
More at the link.
Afterthought:
In order to have a “crisis of conscience,” you must first have a conscience.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
This should not surprise you.
This is the United States of America. Everything eventually wends its way back to race.
Stamped by Racism 0
Let Field tell the story.
The Unstated Clause 0
Jorge Reina Schement, a vice chancellor at Rutgers University, recalls his summer job working on a loading dock when he was a student. Here’s a snippet; follow the link for the rest:
I ran to the front office, where I was told that immigration – La Migra – had swept all the loading docks. When I asked about my fellow workers, I received a shrug. Later, I asked the boss why they didn’t take me. He laughed and replied, “You don’t look like a Mexican.” I was a light skinned Mexican-Italian born in Texas. My first lesson about deportations: Skin color matters.
One could argue that “skin color matters” is an unstated founding principle of the United States, just as the 3/5ths rule was a stated one. The 3/5ths rule is gone (at least formally), but skin color still matters.
Southern Heritage 0
(Post fixed.)
From the land of gracious living: Deneen Brown writes of two historians who are trying to compile a complete listing of ads still extant for runaway slaves in the ante bellum South.
Click to see the article with more examples of gracious living.
A web search for “runaway slaves ads” will turn up a number of sites with actual historical facts that the New Secesh want to pretend don’t exist.
Aside:
I must have broken this post when I was troubleshooting the sidebar issue.
The Court Is in Sessions 0
Leonard Pitts, Jr., excoriates Attorney-General Jeff Sessions’s intent to somehow emasculate consent decrees governing how certain police departments treat Not White persons. A snippet:
In a memo released last week, Sessions worries about tarring police with the actions of a few “bad actors.” Yet DOJ investigations repeatedly found that, far from being isolated events, police abuse – unlawful stops, searches, harassment and beatings targeting African-American citizens – were endemic to the very culture of these departments. They were not flaws in the system. They were the system.
Forensics, Schmorensics 0
Elie Mystal comments on Attorney-General Sessions’s decision to abolish the the National Commission on Forensic Science, created by President Obama just a few years ago to raise standards for forensic science. In the light of the work of the Innocence Project and similar groups, those standards seem sorely in need of raising, or maybe of being created in the first place(PDF from Virginia Law Review). Here’s an excerpt from Mystal’s post:
“Benefit of the Doubt” 0
Responding to a recent kerfuffle about white privilege and its effects on the local economy, Tim Hurley writes with sensitivity and perception of his own experience, as a white man, of white privilege. I commend the article to your attention. Here’s a bit:
This is how we can contribute to the systems of white supremacy without any swastikas or pointed hoods. It is an insidious part of our daily lives, regardless of creed or ideology. You can be a Democrat, a Republican, a liberal or a conservative and contribute to a culture of white supremacy. The actions can be ugly and intentional or small and unthinking – judging the name on a resume, overlooking certain students in a classroom – but the cumulative impact is devastating . . . .
Walleyed 0
Dick Polman thinks Trump’s border wall is a non-starter for many reasons. Here’s one of them; follow the link for the rest.
I’m waiting for Trump to say, “Nobody knew the wall could be so complicated.”
But the biggest problem is that most Americans don’t even want the wall. Turns out – and I know this comes as a shock – that the enthusiasm for walling us off from Mexico was largely confined to the subset of citizens who flocked to Trump’s rallies. Turns out that when it comes to wall spending, most of us are actually fiscal conservatives.
Trump’s proposed budget calls for a $1.5-billion down payment on the wall. According to a new national poll released today, only 28 percent of Americans like the idea. And 58 percent do not.
The Court Is in Sessions 0
Solomon Jones watches Jeff Sessions bring back the good old days.
Read the rest.
Ethnicity 0
Many years ago, I read in one of Bennett Cerf’s books a story about a European author who was visiting the United States in the days of Jim Crow; it was so long ago I can’t remember who the story was about.
He was in a bus station with a friend when he needed to use the restroom. He headed towards the door labeled “Colored” (I’m old enough to remember doors labeled “Colored”).
His friend, somewhat panicked, said, “That’s for colored people!”
He answered, “I am colored. I am pink.”