Tag Archives: white supremacy

This ‘Man’ Is NOT A Hero!!!

Posted on by under Law and justice, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, Social commentary

Two weeks ago, I was horrified by the murder of a Black homeless man, Jordan Neely, by a white man on a New York subway train.  But then, horror turned to rage when I saw some of the reactions, with people calling Mr. Neely’s murderer a “hero” and then when a GoFundMe account was established for his legal defense, it quickly amassed over $2 million!!!  WHAT THE SAM HELL is wrong with people in this country?  People whine and bitch about the economy, the price of fuel & food, but yet they’ve got money to throw away supporting a murderous white supremacist???  Well, rather than listen to me rant, here is what Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky, two writers/journalists I have a great deal of respect for, have to say on the topic …

Daniel Penny shows how much the right loves white vigilante violence

“Law and order” is often code for white supremacy.

Aaron Rupar and Noah Berlatsky

17 May 2023

Daniel Penny leaves the 5th Precinct in Lower Manhattan on May 12. (Michael Nigro/LightRocket via Getty)

Republicans often present themselves as the law and order party — the ones committed to public safety and fighting crime. But when Daniel Penny choked Jordan Neely to death May 1 aboard the New York City subway, the right did not call for police intervention.

Penny is white and a former Marine. Neely was Black and unhoused, and was talking loudly about how hungry and unhappy he was. Neely was not threatening or assaulting anyone, but Penny put him in a chokehold and killed him. Then when Penny was charged with second-degree manslaughter, the right rose as one to condemn the law.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis described Penny as a “Good Samaritan” and called on conservatives to “stop the Left’s pro-criminal agenda” — though, again, DeSantis was the one defending a man who had allegedly broken the law and been arrested.

Even more crudely, Rep. Matt Gaetz called Penny a “Subway Superman.”

Political scientist and right-wing intellectual Richard Hanania said, referring to Neely and his defenders, “these people are animals” — less a dogwhistle than a dog siren. Meanwhile, New York Times opinion columnist David French, a supposedly reasonable conservative and anti-Trumper, justified Penny’s actions by musing, “What if Penny had done nothing? Would everyone — including Neely — have emerged from that subway car unscathed?” Neely did not threaten anyone or attack anyone. But French twists himself into knots to find a way to claim that the murder was a tragic necessity.

It’s not just politicians and faux intellectuals who have rushed to Penny’s defense. Penny’s legal defense fund has raised more than $2 million from right-wing donors —including from singer Kid Rock, who declared, “Mr. Penny is a hero.”

Not hypocrisy, but consistent racism

You could argue that this is an example of conservative hypocrisy: The GOP claims to support law and order, and then turns around and rallies behind homicidal violence when it’s convenient. They don’t abide by their own principles.

But I think in this case the GOP is upholding their core beliefs. That’s because the law they promise to uphold is the law of white supremacy and impunity, and the order they want to impose is one in which Black people are deferential, on pain of death.

Scholar Frank Wilderson III writes, “White people are not simply ‘protected’ by the police; they are the police.” White people, and whiteness, are the law; Black people are always on the wrong side of it. A white person subjugating a Black person is therefore doing the work of the law, and so of course the “law and order” party rushes to his defense.

For conservatives, racist vigilante violence undertaken by white people isn’t really vigilante violence, because white people are all, in Wilderson’s words, automatically “deputized.”

The law of Dirty Harry

Vigilante violence as white supremacist law has a long pedigree in American history. In the 1830s in New York City, for instance, kidnapping rings seized Black children and transported them into slavery. While these rings were technically outside the law and operated in semi-secret, often they were aided by New York marshals like Isaiah Rynders, and by police and judges who operated what historian Jonathan Daniel Wells referred to as a “reverse underground railroad.”

Like Neely today, Black people in the 1830s in New York were considered an affront to order merely by existing, and white people were empowered to remove them from the city with or without the direct collaboration of law enforcement.

A placard featuring an image of Jordan Neely during a demonstration at NYC’s Washington Square Park on May 5. (Andrew Lichtenstein/Corbis via Getty)

As before the Civil War, so afterwards. Lynchings in the South in the Jim Crow era were technically illegal. But targets were generally accused of some crime — especially sexual crimes — and so their murders were carried out in the name of law and order. Executions of Black people were often staged on the courthouse lawn as a way of emphasizing their semi-official nature and their supposed enactment of justice.

When vigilante justice was less public during Jim Crow, officials would generally hurry to cosign it. The murderers of Emmett Till — a Black 14-year-old accused of whistling at a white woman in 1955 — were acquitted by an all-white jury in deliberations that took only an hour.

The Civil Rights movements of the latter 20th century couldn’t erase the subjugation of Black Americans by white authorities. In the 1970s and continuing for 20 years, Chicago police detective Jon Burge and some of his fellow officers used torture to elicit false confessions from more than a hundred Black men in Chicago. Suspects were beaten and shocked with cattle prods. Some were in prison for decades. Mayor Richard M. Daley, then Cook County state’s attorney, covered up the crimes.

In the Burge case, the police themselves were essentially engaged in a systematic, vicious, decades-long campaign of vigilante violence with the collaboration of overseers. That vision of law and order has often been celebrated and glorified in popular culture — as in the Dirty Harry movies, in which a rogue cop takes justice into his own hands, or in innumerable Batman stories, in which the Caped Crusader violently assaults whoever he feels has it coming — all with the enthusiastic support of police chief Jim Gordon.

Bernhard Goetz, George Zimmerman, Daniel Pantaleo, Derek Chauvin, Kyle Rittenhouse, Daniel Penny. Some were cops, some weren’t. But they all received right-wing support because they all were doing the work of law and order — defined as the violent suppression of Black people.

White supremacy Is white vigilante violence

But every once in a while, a different vision of law and order wins out in the United States — one that sees white supremacist violence as a threat to public safety, rather than as its apotheosis.

In 1996, an electronics specialist named Bernhard Goetz lost a $43 million dollar civil suit brought by his victims — four men he shot on a NYC subway in 1984. Burge eventually served two years in prison for perjury related to police torture; Chicago paid reparations to his victims. Derek Chauvin was convicted for his murder of George Floyd. Sometimes, to some degree, a different vision of law and order wins out in the United States — one that sees white supremacist violence as a threat to public safety, rather than as its apotheosis.

But conservatives are desperate to preserve the privilege of white violence, which is why the defenses of Penny sound so rabid and so unhinged. For conservatives, a world in which white men are held accountable for racist murder is a world without law, without order. It’s a world in which chaos (that is, equality) is let loose, and America’s essence (that is, white supremacy) is perverted.

Scholar Thomas Zimmer, in a thoughtful essay, argues that the right’s support of vigilantes is part of a deliberate plan to fight back against creeping egalitarianism and establish an authoritarian fascist state through widespread terror and intimidation. The celebration of Penny “encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to ‘fight back’ against anything and anyone associated with the Left by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence,” Zimmer says. It’s laying the groundwork for the next coup.

Zimmer isn’t wrong. I think it’s worth emphasizing, though, that legitimizing vigilante violence is the new tactic because it’s the old tactic. Whenever confronted with a threat to white supremacy — the Civil War, the Civil Rights movement, the George Floyd protests — conservatives turn to the law and order of white impunity and white violence. White supremacy in the US has always been challenged, which means it’s always on the defensive, always insisting that extrajudicial violence is necessary and glorious.

The forces of white supremacy always deputize vigilante violence, because the right to vigilante violence against Black people is arguably what white supremacy is. The right is fighting for the right of white people to police Black people, and to inflict any extreme of violence upon them in the course of that policing. Black people “have no rights which the white man was bound to respect,” in the words of that bastion of law, the Supreme Court. That’s what American fascism looks like. It’s been around a long time, and we are not rid of it yet.

McCarthy’s QAnon Committee

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, Political commentary

It took the Republicans a few days to figure out how to manipulate Kevin McCarthy and get what they wanted in exchange for giving him the position he has aspired to for years, perhaps decades, but now they’re all saddled up and rarin’ to go!  We knew they planned committees to perform pointless and laughable “investigations” that will amount to naught but a waste of time and money at the end of the day, and they are off to a great start on that.  Washington Post writer Dana Milbank tells us about how closely the Republican Weaponization Committee resembles a QAnon convention in his latest piece.  It is a bit long, but I felt it was all important to give us a clear picture of what we are paying these people to do … or rather, not to do.

Yes, weaponization committee. We are all out to get you.

By Dana Milbank

10 February 2023

One thing is clear after Thursday’s first hearing of the new “Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government”: The weaponization panel’s weapon of choice will be the blunderbuss.

I don’t want to be conspiratorial about it, but House Republicans somehow turned Room 2141 of the Rayburn House Office Building, the Judiciary Committee hearing room, into the main ballroom of a QAnon convention. The witnesses — including world-class conspiracy purveyors Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Ivermectin) and former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (I-Ukraine bioweapons labs) — might as well have been auditioning to guest-host “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”

It is possible that, by random chance, one of the witnesses may have said something that is factually true, but any pellet of accuracy was lost amid all the errant slugs that ricocheted crazily out of their muzzles.

They revisited the “Russian collusion hoax” perpetrated by the “fake dossier,” Fusion GPS, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. They conjured an “engineered” Trump impeachment and a “coordinated effort” to “sabotage any public revelation of Hunter Biden’s laptop.” They alleged maltreatment of Jan. 6 insurrectionists and suggested that embedded federal agents provoked the crowd to attack the Capitol. They went back a decade to revive the debunked charge that a politically motivated Obama administration sicced the IRS on tea party groups.

They imagined that the U.S. government funded the creation of the coronavirus, that the World Health Organization has been “captured by the Chinese government,” and that doctors have been wrongly “vilified” for treating the virus with hydroxychloroquine and other bogus treatments. They fantasized about a government coverup of harms caused by coronavirus vaccines. They imagined that ordinary people are being labeled “domestic terrorists” for asking questions at school board meetings or for flying the Betsy Ross flag.

Above all, the witnesses testified to their own victimhood. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) recited a long list of Democratic colleagues who are out to get him as part of a “triad” that also involves partisan journalists and the FBI. Gabbard, who left the Democratic Party for Fox News after a failed presidential campaign, expressed her outrage that Hillary Clinton said mean things about her and that Mitt Romney made “baseless accusations of treason.” (Apparently, the senator from Utah and 2012 Republican presidential nominee is part of the vast left-wing conspiracy.)

“RonAnon” Johnson testified about a conspiracy so huge it includes “most members of the mainstream media, Big Tech, social media giants, global institutions and foundations, Democrat Party operatives and elected officials,” all working “in concert” with “corrupt individuals within federal agencies” to “defeat their political opponents and promote left-wing ideology and government control over our lives.”

You’ve caught us red-handed, senator! In fact, the weaponization committee needs only one more thing to complete its work: a scintilla of evidence.

White nationalists get a seat on the dais

Rep. Paul Gosar just won’t stop saluting those white nationalists.

The Arizona Republican has dined with them, traveled with them, spoken at their conferences, defended them on social media and promoted their racist themes. He lost his committee assignments in 2021 when he posted a cartoon video of himself killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), a Latina.

But House Republican leaders, in their wisdom, restored Gosar’s committee status, giving him a seat on the House Oversight Committee. And Gosar this week repaid their confidence in him — by using one of the very first hearings of the committee to promote white nationalism.

At a hearing Tuesday on border security, Gosar declared that President Biden has “a plan … to deliberately open our borders and cede power to the cartels,” and thereby create chaos. “What is the answer to this mess for Biden and the Democrats?” he asked. “More big brother? More control? Even changing our culture?”

That is the very definition of the racist “great replacement” conspiracy theory: that the left is deliberately importing immigrants to replace White people and White culture.

As it happens, Democrats on the committee anticipated this. At the hearing’s start, they tweeted a warning about Republican lawmakers “who are using today’s hearing to amplify white nationalist conspiracy theories.” The tweet linked to previous expressions of great replacement sentiments by panel Republicans, including Chairman James Comer of Kentucky (who said Democrats encourage illegal immigration as “part of their social equality campaign to fundamentally change America”) and Rep. Scott Perry of Pennsylvania (who claimed “we’re replacing … native-born Americans to permanently transform the landscape of this very nation”).

Republicans saw red after the Democrats’ mention of white nationalism — “offensive” and “inflammatory” was the view of Rep. Glenn Grothman (Wis.) — but then proceeded to validate the accusation.

Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) both decried the migrant “invasion” of the country.

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-La.) informed the committee who the “million gotaways” — migrants who avoided capture the past two years — are: “stout young men … wearing camouflage, rolling hard … they’re carrying backpacks, they work for the drug cartels.”

And Republican after Republican claimed the Biden administration has conspired to endanger Americans with an “open border” policy.

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials testifying at the hearing played it straight. Yes, they are overwhelmed by the number of migrants, and they need more agents. No, a border wall isn’t a panacea.

Perry repeatedly demanded to know “what changed” since the Trump administration ended to cause such a flood of migration. He was clearly fishing for the officials to blame Biden.

But John Modlin, chief of the Border Patrol’s Tucson sector, testified that the real cause was disinformation. Apprehended migrants, he said, primarily tell border agents that they heard the border “was open.” Said Modlin: “All it takes is a few people to say the right words.”

Now where would migrants get the false impression that the United States has an open border? Hmm.

McCarthy blames Biden for House Republicans’ State of the Union hooliganism

Fourteen years ago, I was in the House chamber when Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shocked the world by shouting two words at President Barack Obama during an address to Congress: “You lie!” In the outcry that followed, House Republican leaders demanded Wilson apologize, which he did, calling the White House and issuing a public statement offering “sincere apologies to the president for this lack of civility.”

In retrospect, the episode looks almost quaint. Wilson might as well have been operating under Emily Post’s rules of etiquette compared with the boorishness of his Republican colleagues at Tuesday night’s State of the Union address.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) reportedly asked Biden in advance not to use the phrase “extreme MAGA Republicans,” and Biden honored the request. The president’s goodwill didn’t end there. He opened by congratulating McCarthy and Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). He used the word “together” 20 times in the speech, hailing bipartisan achievements, offering to resolve the debt-ceiling standoff (“let’s sit down together and discuss our mutual plans together”) and closing with a rallying cry: “We’re the United States of America, and there’s nothing — nothing — beyond our capacity if we do it together.”

Republicans answered him with hooliganism and obscenity. Greene shouted “Liar!” at the president — not once, as Wilson had done, but over and over. As Biden talked about solving the debt standoff together, a woman in Greene’s vicinity (Politico identified her as Greene) shouted “bulls—!” at Biden. Some closer to the front — GOP Sens. Mitt Romney (Utah) and Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) among them — whipped their heads around in surprise.

House Republicans by the dozens groaned, booed, laughed, jeered, waved their hands dismissively at the president and pointed their thumbs down — ignoring an attempt by McCarthy, seated behind Biden, to shush them. Several shouted “secure the border!” One shouted at Biden that fentanyl deaths are “your fault.” Rep. Ronny Jackson (Tex.) noisily chewed gum, Rep. Byron Donalds (Fla.) interrupted Biden with a series of taunts (“don’t say it!”), Boebert shook her head in disgust, others shared laughs about messages on their phone screens, and, in the middle of the mayhem, GOP leaders Steve Scalise, Tom Emmer and Elise Stefanik sat stone-faced.

Decorum has broken down before during presidential addresses. Justice Samuel Alito shook his head and said “not true” during an Obama speech. Democrats groaned and booed during a Trump speech, and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) ripped up her text after Trump finished. Trump called Democrats “treasonous” for failing to applaud him sufficiently.

If holding applause is treason, one can only imagine what capital offenses Republicans committed Tuesday night. And the shouting didn’t end on the House floor.

In Statuary Hall after the speech, I caught up with Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Tex.), who had been sitting next to Greene:

“He lied about the economy! He lied about the deficit! He lied about us cutting Medicare and Social Security. … He lied about the labor shortage! … He lied about burger joints! … He lied about policing. … He lied about Mr. Pelosi.”

“So overall, you liked it?” I asked Fallon.

“I loved the ending, because it was over,” Fallon replied, soon resuming his catalogue: “He said a couple of things like we’re going to work together. He’s lying there, too!”

Fallon shared with me and Joseph Morton of the Dallas Morning News three pages of scribbled notes he took during the address. Among his observations: Biden is a “SNAKE OIL SALESMAN” (and, of course, a “LIAR”) who “MUMBLES” (Fallon thought this evidence of a “health issue”), engages in “climate alarmism” and “CLASS WARFARE” and is apparently a “a communist — accuse him of central control.”

Even some Republicans thought Biden deserved a more “respectful” audience for his “cordial” speech, as Rep. Ryan Zinke (Mont.) told us. But it requires leadership to keep the hooligans in line — and House Republicans don’t have that. McCarthy went on Fox News on Wednesday and blamed the Republicans’ outbursts on Biden. “Well, the president was trying to goad the members, and the members are passionate about it,” the speaker said.

This is how McCarthy repays Biden’s goodwill? It’s going to be a long couple of years.

Probe of Hunter Biden’s laptop already needs a reboot

Rep. James Comer is rapidly establishing himself as the Chief Inspector Dreyfus of the 118th Congress.

First, the newly installed chairman of the House Oversight Committee said he would investigate Biden’s mishandling of classified documents from his time as vice president, but not President Donald Trump’s mishandling of classified documents. Why? “The president has the authority to declassify documents,” he told CNN’s Jake Tapper on Jan. 15. “The vice president does not.”

That rationale blew up a few days later, when it emerged that former vice president Mike Pence also mishandled classified documents. So Comer approached reporters in the Capitol basement on Jan. 31 in an attempt to establish a new justification for probing Biden but not Trump. But Comer succeeded only in confusing himself. “We’re very concerned about who had access to Pence’s documents,” he said — then stopped. “I said Pence. I’m sorry. Let me start all over. We’re very concerned about who had access to Biden’s documents.” Moments later, he added: “I want to be very clear, I was talking about Biden.”

Comer tried again this week, returning to CNN for an interview with Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday. This time, he said he wasn’t looking into Trump’s documents because “there’s a special counsel looking into everything at Mar-a-Lago.”

Collins pointed out that “there’s a special counsel looking into Biden as well.”

Comer, trapped, grasped for a lifeline. “Pardon me for not having as much confidence in this special counsel appointed by [Attorney General] Merrick Garland on Joe Biden.”

Collins checked him again: “But he appointed the special counsel into Trump as well.”

“I’m against both special counsels!” blurted out Comer, contradicting his latest rationale, expressed mere seconds earlier, for probing Biden but not Trump.

Comer is not bound by reason — even his own. Last week, he speculated on Fox News that the Chinese spy balloon might contain bioweapons from Wuhan — speculation he later admitted was based on “no evidence.” Yet he seems sensitive to the impression that he sounds nutty. He recently protested that “I’m sincere about trying to do the right thing.” His evidence: He didn’t vote to overthrow the 2020 election.

Baby steps, Mr. Chairman.

This week, after giving white nationalism a platform, he led his committee the following day into a doomed attempt to prove that the FBI and the Biden campaign colluded with Twitter “to suppress and delegitimize information contained in Hunter Biden’s laptop about the Biden family’s business schemes.” That’s how Comer put it as he sat in front of a blown-up New York Post front page screaming “BIDEN SECRET EMAILS.”

The hearing extended for six hours — including an hour-long break in the middle when the power went out in the hearing room. In the darkness, somebody on the panel (it sounded like Clay Higgins) said: “Now did Twitter do that?”

The conspiracies never end!

Tolerance, Love, Kindness Instead of Hate … PLEASE!

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Mass shootings, racist teachers, pushing, shoving and name-calling … so may signs of increasing incivility in the U.S. today.  Where does it all come from and more importantly, how do we stop it?  Where do people get the idea that one race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, or religion is somehow superior?  Humanity sometimes seems to be almost a thing of the past.  Dan Rather and Elliott Kirschner have a few worthy thoughts on the topic …

Combating Hate

Silence is complicity

Dan Rather and Elliot Kirschner

29 November 2022

Antisemitisim. Racism. Homophobia. Misogyny. Bigotry. The demonization of immigrants.

That these forces are ascendant is newsworthy. And it is vital they are considered thus. That these forces exist, however, is not news. Neither is the fact that they are being stoked, winked at, and normalized by the previous president. And neither is how most of the Republican Party leadership is silent, supportive, or insufficiently disapproving.

To say all this is not a political criticism. It is about confronting a grave threat to our nation and the world. Politics should be about a competition for ideas that fall within the realm of civilized discourse. What these people are peddling is not policy, but prejudice.

Repeating these sentiments should not diminish the importance of the message. The need for us all to confront this with the frequency that we are is evidence of the salience of the mission. And let’s be clear: It is of extra importance for those not directly targeted to speak the loudest. Silence is complicity. To speak softly is cowardice. 

The latest outrage swirls around an occasion at Mar-a-Lago in which the former president dined with avowed antisemites. But we do a disservice to history and the dangers we face by bundling recriminations under the banners of combatting “MAGA” or “Trumpism.” The former president may have built his political power by tapping into a well of hate, but the reservoir was already there. Others are eager to draw from its waters as well.

Discrimination, often enforced with violence, has been a hallmark of our country since its founding. White supremacy is embedded in our Constitution. And the biases and bigotries of the American electorate have shaped some of our national narrative ever since.

To be sure, there is a powerful counter-narrative. It begins with the noble words of our founding documents, which laid out a vision of equality and justice unimaginable at the time of their writing. Over the centuries, countless activists and dreamers have leaned on the courage of their convictions to wrest the nation toward a path of greater inclusion and enlightenment. Most who signed up for service in this army of conscience are not famous, but we are lucky to live in a world made better by their mettle. They have helped to make the nation better and now keep hopes alive that it can and will be getting better, a lot better, still.

We have undoubtedly made progress, but the undercurrents of hatred have never been fully expunged. It takes very little for them to resurge. Far more energy and commitment are required in combating them than in fomenting them.

We should find hope in the journey our nation has taken before. The bigotry we are now decrying was once largely accepted political discourse, in both parties. This is not ancient history. Many of us were of memory age when antisemitic, homophobic, and racist statements were spoken without a second thought. Our country was a weaker place because of it. Our struggle now is to be vigilant in making sure we do not return to that darkness.

We know we have shared these sentiments in this space before. And we know we will almost assuredly have ample reason to do so again. That is the reality. And that is all the more reason this needs to be said. By all of us. Often.

A Step Back In Time …

Posted on by under Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

I am repeating this post that I originally published in 2017.  Why?  Because it was on this date in 1957, exactly 65 years ago, that nine Black students were denied entrance to their high school by the governor of the state of Arkansas and the National Guard in direct opposition to the Supreme Court ruling in Brown v Board of Education three years prior.  Look around today … read the headlines … we are being dragged back into those horrible racist times … schools are effectively finding ways around the laws and once again school segregation is happening … IT IS HAPPENING right before our very eyes.  In 65 years, we moved forward and now are moving backward again.  We need to remember what happened when the Little Rock Nine, as they came to be called, were denied entrance to school and the aftermath.  To forget the lessons of this incident and what followed is to doom future generations to the horrors of living in a racist society.  This is the original post from five years ago …

In a key event of the American Civil Rights Movement, nine black students enrolled at formerly all-white Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, in September 1957, testing a landmark 1954 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared segregation in public schools unconstitutional. The court had mandated that all public schools in the country be integrated “with all deliberate speed” in its decision related to the groundbreaking case Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka. On September 4, 1957, the first day of classes at Central High, Governor Orval Faubus of Arkansas called in the state National Guard to bar the black students’ entry into the school. Later in the month, President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent in federal troops to escort the “Little Rock Nine” into the school, and they started their first full day of classes on September 25.

Civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. attended graduation ceremonies at Central High School in May 1958 to see Ernest Green, the only senior among the Little Rock Nine, receive his diploma.

In September 1958, one year after Central High was integrated, Governor Faubus closed Little Rock’s high schools for the entire year, pending a public vote, to prevent African-American attendance. Little Rock citizens voted 19,470 to 7,561 against integration and the schools remained closed. Other than Green, the rest of the Little Rock Nine completed their high school careers via correspondence or at other high schools across the country. – History.com

Sixty-three years ago, the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v. Board of Education, that separate schools are “inherently unequal.” Sixty years ago this year, the Little Rock Nine, heavily guarded by federal troops, entered Central High School.  Today, much of that progress toward equality in education is unraveling, as a new wave of white supremacy rears its ugly head and mostly-white communities are deciding to re-segregate schools through attrition.

Currently, 30 states have laws that allow geographic communities to secede from large public school districts and form their own. As a result, a growing number of predominantly white, middle class neighborhoods are doing just that and taking their local property taxes with them. That makes racial and economic disparities in adjacent school districts even worse. Almost 50 communities have seceded since the year 2000, according to the nonprofit EdBuild, and a story this week in U.S. News and World Report.

In 1952, the illiteracy rate for blacks 14 years of age or older (10.2 percent) was more than five times that of whites (1.8 percent). More than a quarter of black males (28 percent) completed no more than four years of schooling, compared with less than 9 percent of white males.

The general philosophy, especially in the southern states in the 1950s and prior, was that if African-Americans were kept ill-educated they would remain ‘in their place’ in society. There was also a belief in some areas that African Americans were not intelligent enough to deserve an education. I thought we had risen above such nonsense, but have we? If wealthier white communities pull out of their school districts, taking their property tax dollars with them, that leaves the school district without sufficient funding to provide such things as transportation, textbooks, equipment, building maintenance, supplies and teachers.  Let us think for a moment about the state of black schools in the 1950s …

Students often had to walk to school, as no transportation was provided.  The school year for African Americans was shorter; teacher’s pay was less and the books they used were those no longer needed by white schools, therefore often outdated and in poor condition.

It would be impossible for me to cover all the instances of school districts where communities have seceded, but let us take a brief look at Tennessee, specifically Shelby Country, which includes the city of Memphis. Since the Republican-run state legislature voted to enact the law in 2010, six communities have left the school district.

The impact just one year after the six communities seceded from Shelby County was stark: Its budget was slashed by 20 percent, and declining enrollment has since forced seven Memphis-area schools to close and the district to lay off about 500 teachers in both 2015 and 2016. Tennessee has one of the laxest secession policies in the entire country: In order to create a new city school district, the only requirements are that a municipality has a student population of 1,500 and the support of a majority of municipal voters. Tennessee is one of three states – the other two being Alabama and Mississippi – that does not require approval from any county or state authority.

And while this movement has been going on for many years, it is gaining momentum now, in light of an administration that supports de-regulation of all sorts, including an attorney general who is on record as being a racist, and a secretary of education who is against funding for public schools.  Just last month in Alabama, a judge ruled that Gardendale, a predominantly white, middle-class neighborhood outside Birmingham, would be permitted to secede from majority non-white Jefferson County School District. This, even though the judge acknowledged that the secession was based on racial motives!

race-1-gardendale-sign“Across the country, wealthy communities are drawing their own school district boundaries, often creating bastions of wealth next door to high-poverty, poorly funded districts,” according to Rebecca Sibilia, founder of EdBuild, a nonprofit that focuses on education funding and inequality. Last week, EdBuild put out a report that is well worth a look.

Where does this leave us?  It has the potential to return the state of education in the U.S. to the way it was 60 years ago.  Given that there is a direct link between a lack of education and poverty, it seems inevitable that if this becomes a trend throughout the U.S., we will once again become a highly divided society with race being the dividing line.  With a different Congress, under different administration, there might be reason to hope that the federal government would step in, but in the current circumstances that seems highly unlikely.  Ultimately, I think it likely that there will be lawsuits filed that may ultimately reach the Supreme Court, but that is years into the future.  Meanwhile … the middle-to-upper income children get an education, the poor and non-white children get the scraps that are left over. I can see a situation where ultimately we have to have a do-over of the civil rights era, only this time we have no Martin Luther King, no Lyndon B. Johnson, and no Thurgood Marshall to carry the torch.

This story made me sick to write, but I am fairly certain I will be back with a follow-up or two, as this appears to be a growing trend.  My thanks to Keith Wilson for pointing me to this story.

Images from the past … is this really where we want to go again??? race-2race-3  race-5race-4.jpg

Two More Crawling From Under The Rocks

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Election 2022, guns, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, Social commentary

Unfortunately, Tuesday’s primaries across the nation yielded some deeply disturbing results.  I want to take a look at two, in particular – Lauren Boebert and Mary Miller.

Lauren Boebert has been a representative in the U.S. House of Representatives for a year-and-a-half now and has been nothing but trouble since day #1.  I had sincerely hoped that the Republicans in Colorado’s District 3 would see the horror they had voted for in 2020 and oust her this time ‘round, but apparently they’ve been drinking their fair share of Kool-Aid at Boebert’s Shooters Restaurant and weren’t able to see clearly when they went to the polls on Tuesday.  We all know of Boebert’s gun fetish.  During the pandemic, she sat in on a congressional Zoom meeting with a wall of many guns as her background, and she has caused trouble more than a few times demanding that she be allowed to carry a loaded pistol into places in the Capitol where guns are forbidden.

But it is her latest little tirade that has left me growling …

“The reason we had so many overreaching regulations in our nation is because the church complied. The church is supposed to direct the government. The government is not supposed to direct the church. That is not how our Founding Fathers intended it. And I’m tired of this separation of church and state junk that’s not in the Constitution. It was in a stinking letter and it means nothing like what they say it does.”

GOOD GRIEF!!!  She took an oath swearing to uphold the Constitution, and she hasn’t even read the damned thing!  The concept of separation of church and state comes from the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment … which quite obviously Ms. Boebert either never read, or didn’t understand.  And just WHICH religion does she think should be ‘directing’ the government?  There are roughly 4,200 religions, churches, religious bodies, faith groups, tribes, etc. worldwide today!  Would she advocate for … say … Islam to be the official religion of the nation?  Or Judaism?  And if she answered ‘Christianity’, then which sect or cult, for there are three main branches of Christianity:  Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Orthodox.  Among those three branches are more than 200 separate denominations in the United States alone, more than 45,000 worldwide!  So, pick a religion, and no matter which one you pick, you’re going to be excluding the vast majority of the people in the nation!  And this doesn’t even bring into account folk like me who are non-religious!  We pay taxes and have rights, too, y’know Lauren!

Representative Adam Kinzinger refers to Boebert’s ideology as the “Christian Taliban” and I cannot help but agree with him!  A woman this stupid has absolutely ZERO business sitting in the United States Congress … or any lawmaking body, for that matter … and can only be considered a laughingstock, albeit a very dangerous laughingstock.  I would like to be able to say I’m hopeful that the Democratic candidate for the 3rd District in Colorado can wipe the pavement with her on election day in November, but sadly … it’s doubtful because of the 184,794 votes cast for both parties in yesterday’s primary, Boebert scored 83,217 of the votes and her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, only received 24,961 votes.  Republicans scored 68% of the total votes, so it looks like the 3rd District in Colorado is populated by people who care more about their guns than their future.

And then there’s Mary Miller, another newbie in the U.S. House of Representatives representing Illinois’ 15th District who also won her primary yesterday.  I had not heard of Ms. Miller until she flew onto my radar last week with this comment after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the 1973 Roe v Wade decision …

“President Trump, on behalf of all the MAGA patriots in America, I want to thank you for the historic victory for white life in the Supreme Court yesterday.”

GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR … 🤬

First of all, there is NO “president trump” and second of all … a victory for ‘white’ life???  What a (cover your ears, Keith!) ignorant, ugly, racist pig she is!!!  She later claimed that she meant to say “the right to life”, but I don’t believe that for a minute, for she would have caught and corrected herself immediately had that been the case, not waited until she was confronted about her comment.

Miller has done a number of troublesome things in her 18-month tenure in Congress, from quoting Hitler to introducing anti-trans legislation to passing along anti-Semitic and white supremacist propaganda, but the “white life” comment is the first time she floated onto my radar and frankly I wish she had stayed off!

So, my friends, it looks like certain parts of this nation are seeking some serious change … change that, if they are successful, is likely to drive us directly from a democratic republic into a fascist dictatorship, a nation where only white males have any value and the rest of us will be dominated by them.  Surely we’re not going to sit still for this?  Margie Greene, Matt Gaetz, Lauren Boebert, and now Mary Miller … where does it end?  Is this to be our future, or are these just momentary blips on the radar?

Where Is The Compassion???

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, education, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry

Two things caught my attention first thing today and thus, it must be time for me to step into my snarky shoes.

Dangerous in Arizona

Wendy Rogers … remember the name, for she is by far the worst political wannabe I’ve seen, and I’ve seen some pretty awful ones lately!  Ms. Rogers spoke at the same white nationalist (KKK) rally last month that Representatives Margie Greene and Paul Gosar spoke at, and Ms. Rogers topped even those two for utter inhumane remarks like this one …

 “We need to build more gallows, make an example of these traitors who’ve betrayed our country.”

Who is this Rogers clown?  She is a state senator in Arizona who was once considered to be a traditional conservative, but apparently drank so much of the former guy’s Kool Aid that her mind has become a toxic fertile ground for the radical right-wing hatred we are seeing so much of in this country today.

When she won her current Arizona State Senate seat in 2020, she had lost five previous elections, so she changed her message to one of hate, of bigotry, of destruction and conspiracy theories.  For example, she refers to the COVID vaccine as a “bioweapon” and is full-on supportive of “The Big Lie” that is still a talking point in some Republican circles, though it has been debunked so many times that it’s a joke.  But all of her messages of hate seem to be working, for she is the biggest fundraiser in the Arizona state legislature, having raised some $2.5 million in 2021.

She has been censured by the Arizona Senate for her remarks, but it matters not to her …

“This censure is nothing more than an attempt to limit my speech. In the end, I rejoice in knowing I do and say what is right, and I speak as a free American regardless of the actions of this corrupted process today.”

Ms. Rogers is only a state senator and you might say she’s irrelevant outside the state of Arizona, but state politicians often aspire to higher office and this is a woman that we do not need in the United States Congress!  As much as I despise the likes of Greene, Boebert, Cawthorn and their ilk, this woman could prove to be twice as dangerous.  Arizona – if you guys want her, then fine, you can have her, but do not let her out of the state!!!

And in Florida … “Don’t Say Gay”!

I have a number of friends who live in Florida, and they are all good people, sensible people, kind, caring and compassionate people.  But obviously they are the anomaly in the state, for it seems the majority in Florida are egocentric, bigoted, homophobic, and cruel, starting with none other than Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who said …

“We are going to make sure parents are able to send their kid to kindergarten without having some of this stuff injected into some of their school curriculum.”

Oh for Pete’s sake, Ronnie … wake up and walk into the 21st century!!!

Clinton McCracken, 49, a teacher at Howard Middle School Academy of Arts, voices his concerns …

“This is a dangerous bill, which basically tells our LGBTQ students that something is wrong with them. This bill says I won’t be able to have conversations or be able to create an affirmative space for my students.”

The bill passed the Florida Senate by 22-17 along party lines.  So … let me get this straight … the lives and well-being of Florida’s children has now become an issue for partisan politics???  I sure as hell am glad that I don’t live in Florida!  What a lot of bigots!!!  Everyone, it seems, must fit into a very narrow box in order to be treated with respect … the box will only hold white, straight, ‘Christian’ people, preferably males.  Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Black Face On White Supremacy

Posted on by under cartoons, Environmental Issues, History, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Re-blogs, Social commentary

On September 14th, Californians will cast their vote to either keep current Governor Gavin Newsom or replace him with one of a number of other candidates vying for his job. The leading contender appears to be Larry Elder, who I have mentioned before here on Filosofa’s Word. Elder is NOT a man under whose governance I would wish to live! Clay Jones over at Claytoonz has done a fantastic job of showing us who Elder is … read on!

claytoonz

Cjones09082021

Over the weekend, a speaker at a rally for California governor Gavin Newsome said his Republican opponent, Larry Elder, is a “black face on white supremacy.” Larry Elder is a controversial right-wing Trump-supporting conspiracy-spreading whack job with a radio show who also happens to be black. But black people can be conservative lunatics too, right? Is it fair to accuse one of them, like Larry Elder, of being a “black face on white supremacy?” After all, Larry Elder is totally 100 percent in favor of reparations for slavery.

Of course, it’s not descendants of slaves Larry wants reparations for. No, Larry believe slave OWNERS should be rewarded reparations.

Ya’ see, Larry was talking to fellow black conservative lunatic, Candace Owens (which helps defend him from the charges of racism because she can be his prop for a black friend), and he argued since slavery was legal, slave owners were robbed…

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Voting Is A RIGHT, Not A Privilege!!!

Posted on by under Election 2020, History, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Rants, Social commentary, voting rights

In 1965, Congress passed, and President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Voting Rights Act of 1965.  Please note and remember that this bill was NOT titled the Voting Privilege Act of 1965, but the Voting RIGHTS Act … rights, not privileges.

Several constitutional amendments, the 15th, the 19th, and the 26th, require that voting rights of U.S. citizens cannot be abridged on account of race, color, previous condition of servitude, sex, or age (18 and older).  Are we all in agreement here that every person over the age of 18 has the right to vote?

However, according to a recent PEW Research study, white people don’t think that voting is a right, but rather a privilege that one must earn!  It’s no damn wonder, then, that 42 states are in the process of drafting or passing legislation that would make it far more difficult for people of colour, for the elderly, for college students, and for working women to cast a vote.

More than once I have ranted about those who don’t vote, or who vote for an inviable third-party candidate.  In my view it is irresponsible — we all have a DUTY to vote, even if we aren’t enamoured of any of the candidates.  I have also proposed that we have mandatory voting.  I have proposed switching election dates to Sunday so that all will have time and access to the vote.  I have also proposed that every state should go to an all-postal voting system in order to make voting as painless as possible for everyone. So, you can imagine that I am LIVID to find out that white people think voting is a privilege to be earned.

Why???  We all have to live under the laws that are determined by the president and members of Congress, so WHY THE HELL shouldn’t we ALL have a voice in choosing those people???  Why should some be forced to follow laws made by people that they didn’t even have a chance to vote for or against?  I have long ranted against restrictions in some states that disenfranchise former prisoners who are on parole.  They paid their dues, served their time … now they are out of prison, most are gainfully employed and paying taxes … WHY THE HELL shouldn’t they be allowed to vote???

And this is a partisan issue.  Among Democrats, only 21% see the right to vote as a ‘privilege’, while among Republicans, 67% believe that the ‘privilege’ of voting must be earned.

Quite frankly, I cannot imagine anything short of actually being in prison during election day that should prevent a person from voting.  Qualified?  Well, if they are a citizen, then in my mind they are qualified.  If John Doe is a Black citizen, an employed taxpayer, then why do the tighty whiteys want to take away his right … yes, RIGHT … to vote?  Do they think they are better than he is?  Do they think their opinion has more value than his?  Or … do they just figure he isn’t as smart or as ‘entitled’ as they are? Or … are they afraid?  Afraid that if enough Black people have a say in who makes the laws that govern us all, they might lose their privileged status?  Are they afraid that someday our Congress won’t be 90% white, but will instead be 40% white?  What, exactly, are you afraid of, Karen?

Black Americans are more likely than those in other racial and ethnic groups to see voting as a fundamental right, while White Americans are the least likely to say this. About three-quarters of Black Americans (77%) say voting is a right for every U.S. citizen and should not be restricted, as do 63% of Hispanic Americans and 66% of Asian Americans. White Americans are about evenly divided: 51% say voting is a right, while 48% say it is a privilege.

That 48% … they make me ashamed to be Caucasian … make me wish my olive-toned skin were much darker, for I am NOT white … not at heart … not if this is the way white people think!  Stick your Ango-Saxon heritage where the sun doesn’t shine … I am not as one with you!

Never before in my 70 years here on earth, as a citizen of the United States, have I been so ashamed of this country and its people.  Were it just me, I would leave this country tomorrow, by whatever means I could, including death, and never have a regret – that is how much I despise what is happening in this country.  But I feel an obligation, a responsibility, in part to my daughter and granddaughter, and in part to the people of this nation, to fight the good fight, to fight against the white supremacist forces of evil.

Snarky Snippets For A Rainy Day

Posted on by under Bits 'n Pieces, Law and justice, Political commentary, Racism & Bigotry, Social commentary

Rainy days seem to make me more snarky than usual … I wonder why that is?  Well, it isn’t raining yet, but the clouds are moving in rapidly, so I might as well go ahead and get my suit of snark on.

A new trial?  HELL NO!

Predictably, Derek Chauvin’s lawyer, Eric Nelson, has filed a motion asking for a new trial.  Who could have seen that coming, eh?  He cited a number of “reasons” for the request, including the judge’s decisions to not sequester the jury during the trial, to not change the location of the proceedings and to not grant a new trial because of publicity that he claims included the intimidation of the defense’s expert witnesses.  He also claimed “that the jury committed misconduct, felt threatened or intimidated, felt race-based pressure during the proceedings, and/or failed to adhere to instructions during deliberations.”  Interestingly, however, he provided little or no detail to support his complaints.

His single “example” that the jury had been tainted revolves around a single juror and Nelson’s supposed complaint stems from the fact that said juror had attended the 57th anniversary of the March on Washington, when the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.  Say WHAT???  So, now we are disqualified from serving on a jury if we have attended an event, one that was attended by tens of thousands of people including notable celebrities, civil rights leaders, and even members of Congress???

It is highly unlikely that Chauvin will be granted a new trial, and if he is, it is even less likely that the outcome would be any different than the first trial.  The entire world has seen the indisputable evidence.  It is merely a delaying tactic … Chauvin and Nelson are hoping that the memory of that video of him killing George Floyd will fade in peoples’ minds, but that is NOT going to happen.  What will happen, if Chauvin is granted a new trial, is that tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars will be wasted.  Precious time and court resources frittered away on an attempt to set a racist murderer free.  Frankly, I have spent all I plan to spend to try this horrible excuse for a man.  He has been proven guilty and will be sentenced on June 16th.  Anything else is unacceptable, is a waste of time, money, and resources that could better be spent elsewhere.

Hand over da memo!

Earlier this week, a bit of positive news came when Judge Amy Berman Jackson of the United States District Court in Washington ordered the Department of Justice to release a March 2019 legal memo clearing former President Trump of potential obstruction of justice charges following the Mueller investigation, with the judge accusing former Attorney General William Barr and agency lawyers of deceiving the public.

Judge Jackson gave the DOJ two weeks to release the legal memo in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the liberal watchdog group Citizens for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington (CREW).  The Justice Department under Barr had argued that the memo should be withheld because it falls under exceptions to the public records law for attorney-client privilege and deliberative government decision-making.

The reality I think we are all aware of is that there was nothing honest or open about William Barr’s assessment of the Mueller Report, and that there is something in that report that has been kept from both the public and from Congress that proves Donald Trump and/or those working on his behalf did, in fact, condone Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.  Soon, perhaps, we will have the proof we need, as well as some hope that the former guy may finally pay a price for his traitorous dishonesty, for subverting the voice of We the People.

May 17th, one week from next Monday, is the deadline Judge Jackson gave the Justice Department … stay tuned!

And from the annals of ridiculous lawsuits …

Stephen Miller

Former presidential aide, Stephen Miller – the white supremacist with ties to Nazis – has filed a lawsuit against the Biden administration.  Why, you ask?  He claims the Biden administration’s funds reserved for “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers” discriminate against white people.  I don’t know whether to laugh or throw something!

The complaint comes from America First Legal (AFL), a group founded and subsidized by Miller, whose mission statement on their website is to …

“Fight Back Against Lawless Executive Actions and the Radical Left.”

In a statement announcing the lawsuit, Miller cited words from the late Martin Luther King, Jr., writing, “Americans ‘should not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.’”  How DARE an avowed white supremacist quote the late, great, Dr. Martin Luther King!  And frankly, if Mr. Miller and his band of merry racists were to be judged by the ‘content of their character’, they would likely be found to have not a single redeeming quality in their ‘character’.

I hope this lawsuit is laughed out of the courts and that this organization soon disbands, for their only purpose is to destroy diversity and create an all-white fascist nation.  Sigh.  Oh, and the AFL group is also complaining about school children learning the true history — the good, the bad, and the ugly — of this nation.  What a group, eh?