“That Conversation about Race” category archive
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Michael Paul Williams hears echoes of the rise. Here’s a bit of his article:
(snip)
We’ve seen this backlash at pivotal points in U.S. history: the Reconstruction period following the Civil War; the aftermath of the American Civil Rights Movement; and in response to the election of our nation’s first African American president. Its latest iteration is the reaction to the 2020 racial reckoning that occurred after incidents of police brutality that took the lives of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, among others.
I commend the entire article to your attention.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Robert Reich argues that the America’s second Civil War has already begun.
Follow the link for his reasoning.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
A local high school baseball team has been benched because some of its members insisted on rising again.
America’s original sin of chattel slavery continues to exact its toll and poison our polity.
Afterthought:
That some of the team members are racist does not surprise me.
After all, racism is an American creation. Specifically, the belief that one race is somehow inferior to another and therefore can legitimately be subjugated and exploited is a construct created in the British colonies in America during the 17th Century to justify rationalize excuse chattel slavery. From there, it spread to everywhere Europeans established colonies during the Age of Empire.
I am, however, somewhat disturbed by how willing persons are today to flaunt their racism before others, over half a century after the passage of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s.
Why, one wonders, do they think it has become okay to take their hate-full-ness public.
(Yes, I have my theories.)
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
The New Secesh have launched a counterattack.
What You Don’t Know Can Hurt You 0
Unless you’ve been asleep, you have seen the news about how Republican Thought Police are busy policing thoughts they don’t like, particularly thoughts granting equality and inclusion to persons who diverge from being white, Evangelical they-call-themselves Christians, or straight. I’ve certainly posted about it a number of times (you can search for “Republican Thought Police” on the sidebar, over there —–>).
At Psychology Today Blogs, Heather Rose Artushin looks at the harm banning books can do. Here’s a tiny bit from her article; follow the link for a detailed look at the harm that Republican Thought Police are causing.
Research supports that book bans are bad for mental health, especially impacting:
1. Marginalized individuals whose stories are contained in the majority of challenged books. . . .
2. Children and teens suffer when books are banned in their schools and public libraries for many reasons. . . .
3. Librarians and school staff experience added stress and anxiety due to the atmosphere of censorship that book banning creates. . . .
4. Authors make their livelihood selling books, and book bans not only impact some authors’ income, but might leave them feeling excluded and marginalized as well. . . .
“History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Often Rhymes”* 0
Today’s rhymes are brought to you by Michael in Norfolk and by AL.com’s Roy S. Johnson.
____________________
*Mark Twain.
Diagnosis: Delusion 0
I think any psychologist would agree with me that this is a clear case of projection.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
If this is not de facto secession, I don’t know what is.
The Woes of Jerry Whinefeld 0
Sam Seder dissects Jerry Seinfeld’s whining about “woke.”
Republican Thought Police 0
Farron delights in Florida Man’s being hoisted on his own petard.
Gutting Out the Vote 0
LA Granderson has a question concerning the Speaker of the house:
(snip)
Johnson’s party has been working to suppress Black votes for decades, so what is he talking about when he trumpets “election integrity”?
Follow the link, where Granderson puts his question into context.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
AL.com’s Roy Johnson wonders why one thing is not like the other thing.
A Notion of Immigrants 0
They call themselves news hawks, but they are actually carrion crowers.
Republican Thought Police 0
The SPLC tells one teacher’s story.
Afterthought:
The Republican Thought Police have a motto:
Don’t educate. Indoctrinate.
Still Rising Again after All These Years 0
Sam and the crew skewer racists’ claims that somehow racists are discriminated against because they are called out for being racist.
Afterthought:
I remember when my father, who grew up under Jim Crow, as did I, said to me late in his life, “I’m glad those days are gone.”
Well, those days–or, more properly, the hatred and bigotry and greed and exploitation (read “theft of labor”) that created them–are not gone, though they may have been slightly in eclipse.
Over half a century ago, Richard Nixon’s odious “Southern Strategy” invited racists to join his political party. Now that “Southern Strategy” has come full circle and consumed Nixon’s party, so that today we have a political party dedicated to bringing back Jim Crow.